Google Flu Trends Tracking System Tool Helps Predict Swine Flu Outbreak

Google said on Wednesday that it had detected a spike in Mexicans searching online for information about human flu symptoms, before the swine flu outbreak became widely known, using a new tracking tool.

The Google Flu Trends system was launched last autumn and has been used by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to track locations of flu outbreaks.

Google found that people suffering from flu were inclined to search the internet for the same symptoms. These searches could be used to predict areas where flu outbreaks might occur.