Google catches Swine Fever

If you’ve been on holiday to Mars you may have missed all the coverage on the pandemic that is Swine Flu. For the rest of us there has been daily coverage on the net, in the press and on the television.

The daily commute into work has become more like a gauntlet run, trying to avoid all the coughs and snivels of those who have clearly missed the huge campaign of “Catch it. Bin it. Kill it“. The NHS even put a front page advertisement on the Metro, which listed the symptoms and what to do if you thought you were suffering from them.

Rather than harping on about the symptoms and what to do if you think you may have contracted it (contact the NHS helpline or visit www.direct.gov.uk/swineflu) I would like to provide you with a little insight into how these few words have had an unquestionable impact on search engine traffic.

The phrase “Swine Flu” until April this year had not received any search volume at all but in June managed 2,740,000 searches. The term currently has a global monthly search volume of 5,000,000. Meaning that the term “swine flu symptoms” pails into insignificance with its global monthly search volume of 450,000.

What is further enlightening is that when you look into the search locations – the UK comes out on top with the highest regional interest for the term, followed by Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, New Zealand and completing the top 5 is the USA.

Whether these statistics point to the fact that we are a nation interested in the subject or that there was simply an unsatisfactory delay in the supply of information to the public is not for me to comment.

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