Google.org has announced the expansion of Google Flu Trends to 16 additional countries, including Europe. The site now is available in 37 languages and it tracks flu-related search terms as an early predictor of flu trends. In the U.S., Google Flu Trends had a close 0.92 correlation with official U.S. flu data. Matt Mohebbi and Dan Vanderkam, Software Engineers, mentioned: "Last November, we launched Google Flu Trends in the United States after finding a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. By tracking the popularity of certain Google search queries, we are able to estimate the level of flu, in near real-time."
How Google Flu Trends Works
For further information, please visit: http://www.google.org/flutrends/
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About Google.org
In 2004, when Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin wrote to prospective shareholders about their vision for the company, they outlined a commitment to contribute significant resources, including 1% of Google's equity and profits in some form, as well as employee time, to address some of the world's most urgent problems. That commitment became Google.org.