Nevertheless, data from several online sources are being widely used to monitor disease outbreaks and occurrence, mainly from Google and social media. In several countries, official health data are not publicly available, and even in countries where data are available, they usually consist of large time-interval data (eg, annual data), which makes the analysis and forecasting of diseases and outbreaks more difficult. This means that data cannot be accessed in real time, which is crucial in health assessment. Data collection and analysis of official health data on disease occurrence and prevalence involve several health officials and can even take years until the relevant data are available. The main limitation of validating this line of research is the general lack of openness and availability of official health data. This use of the internet has formed two new concepts: “Infodemiology,” first defined by Eysenbach as “the science of distribution and determinants of information in an electronic medium, specifically the Internet, or in a population, with the ultimate aim to inform public health and public policy”, and “Infoveillance,” defined as “the longitudinal tracking of infodemiology metrics for surveillance and trend analysis”. The use of internet data has become an integral part of health informatics over the past decade, with online sources becoming increasingly available and providing data that can be useful in analyzing and predicting human behavior. JMIR Public Health Surveill 2019 5(2):e13439 Overall, this article presents and analyzes the key points that need to be considered to achieve a strong methodological basis for using Google Trends data, which is crucial for ensuring the value and validity of the results, as the analysis of online queries is extensively integrated in health research in the big data era. At first, an overview of the tool and the data are presented, followed by an analysis of the key methodological points for ensuring the validity of the results, which include selecting the appropriate keyword(s), region(s), period, and category. We provide a step-by-step guide for the methodology that needs to be followed when using Google Trends and the essential aspects required for valid results in this line of research. This article aims at providing an overview of the tool and data and at presenting the first methodology framework in using Google Trends in infodemiology and infoveillance, including the main factors that need to be taken into account for a strong methodology base. Despite the large number of Google Trends studies during the last decade, the literature on the subject lacks a specific methodology framework. Online search traffic data from Google have been shown to be useful in analyzing human behavior toward health topics and in predicting disease occurrence and outbreaks. The most popular tool for examining online behavior is Google Trends, an open tool that provides information on trends and the variations of online interest in selected keywords and topics over time. JMIR Bioinformatics and Biotechnology 12 articlesĭepartment of Computing Science and MathematicsĮmail: data are being increasingly integrated into health informatics research and are becoming a useful tool for exploring human behavior.JMIR Biomedical Engineering 58 articles.JMIR Perioperative Medicine 61 articles.Journal of Participatory Medicine 68 articles.JMIR Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies 164 articles.JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting 221 articles. ![]() Interactive Journal of Medical Research 236 articles.JMIR Public Health and Surveillance 915 articles.Journal of Medical Internet Research 6701 articles.
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