Google Flu Trends Expanded To Australia

Google has expanded its Flu Trends tracker — which uses the number of queries related to flu to extrapolate how many people might actually have it — to Australia.

That approach might seem counter-intutive — after all, people are more likely to search for flu information if there’s, say, a media-induced panic over swine flu — but Google has mapped past query patterns against infection rates and says there’s a reasonable correlation. This doesn’t feel as useful as Google’s last Australia-specific set of tracking tools (for bushfires), but it’ll be interesting to see whether it maintains an accurate track over the next few weeks.

Google Flu Trends Australia