How often people google for vaccination: Qualitative and quantitative insights from a systematic search of the web-based activities using Google Trends

Abstract

Nowadays, more and more people surf the Internet seeking health-related information. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) can represent an important opportunities in the field of Public Health and vaccinology.The aim of our current research was to investigate a) how often people search the Internet for vaccination-related information, b) if this search is spontaneous or induced by media, and c) which kind of information is in particular searched. We used Google Trends (GT) for monitoring the interest for preventable infections and related vaccines.When looking for vaccine preventable infectious diseases, vaccine was not a popular topic, with some valuable exceptions, including the vaccine against Human Papillomavirus (HPV). Vaccines-related queries represented approximately one third of the volumes regarding preventable infections, greatly differing among the vaccines. However, the interest for vaccines is increasing throughout time: in particular, users seek information about possible vaccine-related side-effects. The five most searched vaccines are those against 1) influenza; 2) meningitis; 3) diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), and tetanus; 4) yellow fever; and 5) chickenpox.ICTs can have a positive influence on parental vaccine-related knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and vaccination willingness. GT can be used for monitoring the interest for vaccinations and the main information searched.

Trends of infodemiology studies: a scoping review

“…With respect to the validation, 33% (nine articles) of the demand based studies made comparisons against comparison data sets to validate their output (Bragazzi, Bacigaluppi, Robba, Siri, et al., ; Bragazzi, Barberis, et al., ; Domnich et al., ; Eysenbach, ; Mnadla et al., ; Ocampo et al., ; Siri et al., ; Wang, Chen, Yu & Chen, ; Yom‐Tov & Gabrilovich, ).…”

“…The Web tools used for conducting infodemiology studies have some limitations. The first limitation of these Web tools, such as Google Trends or Twitter, is that they track only the segment of population that uses and surfs the Web and monitors their health information behaviour (Alicino et al., ; Bragazzi, Dini, Toletone, Brigo & Durando, ; Bragazzi, Barberis, et al., ; Bragazzi, Watad, et al., ; Nuti et al., ). However, as mentioned in other studies, the major limitation of these Web tools, especially Google Trends, is the lack of detailed information on the method used for the search and analysis of new big data streams ( Alicino et al., ; Bragazzi, Barberis, et al., ; Bragazzi et al., ; Nuti et al., ).…”

Correlation between Google Trends on dengue fever and national surveillance report in Indonesia

“…According to Bragazzi [33], Google Trends can be used to monitor the public interest and the most commonly searched topic, while Google Trends cannot be used to disclose the individual characteristics as done by conventional surveillance system. Therefore, Google Trends does not have the capacity to replace the existing surveillance systems [34] but can serve to supplement and complement them.…”

Infoveillance of infectious diseases in USA: STDs, tuberculosis, and hepatitis

“…Google Trends has been a useful tool for the analysis, monitoring, forecasting, and nowcasting of many health topics; in seasonal [2,10], chronic [11][12][13][14], and infectious diseases [15][16][17], as well as in outbreaks and epidemics, such as in AIDS [18], Measles [19], Ebola [20,21], MERS [22], and the Zika Virus [23][24][25]. Online queries have been much employed up to this point for the analysis and forecasting of Influenza Like Illness, i.e., the flu [6,[26][27][28], while an emerging interest in analyzing Google queries for vaccination related topics has been increasing over the last couple of years [19,[29][30][31]. Other topics that Google Trends data have found significant applicability, include the monitoring of cancer types and screenings [32][33][34][35], the relation between online queries and suicide rates [36][37][38][39], as well as the analysis of the online interest and its association with both legal [40][41][42] and illegal drugs [43,44].…”