Infodemiology

User-generated health data from internet search and social media to inform public health and public policy responses

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Internet Search Data

Search Datasets from Google & Bing

Bing Coronavirus search query set

🌎🔗 https://github.com/microsoft/BingCoronavirusQuerySet
🗣 [email protected]
This dataset was curated from the Bing search logs (desktop users only) over the period of Jan 1st, 2020 – April 18th, 2020.Only searches that were issued many times by multiple users were included. Dataset includes queries from all over the world that had an intent related to the Coronavirus or Covid-19. In some cases this intent is explicit in the query itself, e.g. “Coronavirus updates Seattle” in other cases it is implicit , e.g. “Shelter in place” .Implicit intent of search queries (e.g. Toilet paper) were extracted by using Random walks on the click graph approach as outlined in this paper by Microsoft Research. All personal data was removed.

Coronavirus searches by date/lang/country from AnswerThePublic

🌎🔗 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1roQeJkDBH2d2UGV85HzwAmxOHwehV2te4X7YzRcWqDI
🗣 [email protected]
Search term variation data on Coronavirus (i.e., what people google when they google “coronavirus”) Geographical scope: Various languages and countries (including Italy, Netherlands, France, Germany, Belgium, US, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Norway, Switzerland, UK)
Data has been collecting on a near-daily basis since 20/01/2020

Coronavirus search term variations and volume - various countries

🌎🔗https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1elbDJU7WPPv5s2-rS8K9M53Og-gvCm5pV2kN87BLxpk/edit?usp=sharing
🗣https://twitter.com/samgilb
Long lists of Coronavirus keywords with estimated search volumes for 9 countries, sourced from the search engine marketing tool SEMrush. Covers UK, Italy, India, USA, Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Brazil. As at 14 March 2020.

Country-specific search datasets

Madagascar
Coronavirus search term variation data in French for Madagascar from Answer The Public (as at 6 April 2020):
MG 🔗https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DBcm9Y6ZCOoh61RNeCjROpXTJ76RiFWh_cVABTaDRe8/edit#gid=0

United Kingdom
🇬🇧🔗https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rWdx7ITPyAA5497T18TI1BL5Gxz-Oi7aVAVrE8f50sU/edit?usp=sharing
Search term variation data from Hitwise on Coronavirus (as at 25 Jan 2020) - that is, what people google when they google “Coronavirus”

United Kingdom - Counties, Cities, Towns
🇬🇧🔗 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19Sc2M3zP-OwQjdwefTvW54vwsIJ0JpSAYL_cCYD1DTE/edit?usp=sharing
Search term variation data for the UK by County, City & Town, extracted from the Bing Coronavirus Search Query Set. April 2020.

Academic Papers

"The use of google trends to investigate the loss of smell related searches during COVID‐19 outbreak"

🔗 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/alr.22580
🗣 [email protected]

"Tracking COVID-19 using online search" (Pre-print working paper)

🔗 https://github.com/vlampos/covid-19-online-search/blob/master/covid-19-online-search.pdf
🗣 [email protected]

"Tracking COVID-19 in Europe: Infodemiology Approach"

🔗 https://publichealth.jmir.org/2020/2/e18941/
🗣 [email protected]

"How to Best Predict the Daily Number of New Infections of COVID-19" (Pre-print)

🔗 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3571252
🗣 [email protected]

"The Second Worldwide Wave of Interest in Coronavirus since the COVID-19 Outbreaks in South Korea, Italy and Iran: A Google Trends Study" Brain, Behavior, and Immunity

🔗 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889159120305511
🗣 https://twitter.com/arturstrzelecki

"Online Information Search During COVID-19" (Pre-print)

🔗 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.07183v1.pdf
🗣 [email protected]

"In Crisis, We Pray: Religiosity and the COVID-19 Pandemic" (Pre-print)

🔗 https://www.dropbox.com/s/jc8vcx8qqdb84gn/Bentzen_religiosity_covid.pdf?dl=0
🗣 https://twitter.com/JeanetBentzen

"Internet Search Patterns Reveal Clinical Course of Disease Progression for COVID-19 and Predict Pandemic Spread in 32 Countries" (Pre-print)

🔗 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.20087858v1
🗣 [email protected]; [email protected]

"Evidence from internet search data shows information-seeking responses to news of local COVID-19 cases"

🔗 https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/05/01/2005335117
🗣 [email protected]; [email protected]

Tools

Google Trends

🔗 https://trends.google.com/trends/
To request Google Trends API access:
🔗 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSenHdGiGl1YF-7rVDDmmulN8R-ra9MnGLLs7gIIaAX9VHPdPg/viewform
For general guidance on using Google Trends in academic research: 🔗http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hal/Papers/2015/primer.pdf

Answer The Public

🔗 https://answerthepublic.com/
🗣 https://twitter.com/answerthepublic
Instant, raw search insights on any keyword, compiled from Google autocomplete suggestions, with csv download

Visualizations

Anosmia Searches

🔗 USA: https://www.berlinquette.com/anosmia-searches
🔗 Tanzania: https://www.berlinquette.com/anosmia-google-searches-tanzania
🗣 [email protected]
Interactive visualization of Google searches for anosmia / loss of smell in the most populated cities in the US and Tanzania. Built in Google Data Studio, so data is downloadable in csv.

Coronasearch Live

🔗 https://www.coronasearch.live/
🗣 https://twitter.com/WarmSpeakers
Currently, people in China use VPN's (Virtual Private Networks) to bypass censorship, and Google info about the Coronavirus (COVID-19). This website compiles these Google searches, word for word, in real-time. Built in Google Data Studio, so data is downloadable in csv.

Should I Suggestions

🔗 https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/1512938/
🗣 https://twitter.com/ColeyBird
Evolution of UK public's concerns over time during 2020, as revealed by searches beginning "Should I..."

Blogs & Journalism

"Goldman says fewer "Loss of Smell" Google queries suggest better COVID-19 prospects"

🔗 https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/15/goldman-says-fewer-loss-of-smell-google-searches-is-a-positive-sign-for-pandemic.html
🗣 https://twitter.com/tomwfranck
CNBC

"Search Trends and The Coronavirus Outbreak: Causation or Correlation"

🔗 https://www.semrush.com/blog/search-trends-coronavirus/
🗣 https://twitter.com/SEO
SEMRush

"Your Google Searches Could Shape the Response to the Next Pandemic"

🔗 https://onezero.medium.com/your-google-searches-could-shape-the-response-to-the-next-pandemic-ade9148a5e58
🗣 https://twitter.com/chrisbaraniuk
OneZero

"Smells like trouble? Google searches as a sign of COVID-19"

🔗https://mtega.com/2020/05/smells-like-trouble-google-searches-as-a-sign-of-covid-19/
🗣 https://twitter.com/mtega

"Can Google Ads data predict the next coronavirus outbreak?"

🔗https://mashable.com/article/google-ads-data-coronavirus/?europe=true
🗣 https://twitter.com/MattBinder
Mashable

Social Media Data

Social Media Datasets

Covid-19 Twitter chatter dataset for scientific use

🌎🔗http://www.panacealab.org/covid19/
Dataset of tweets acquired from the Twitter Stream related to COVID-19. Includes all language, with English, Spanish, and French most prevalent.

COVID-19-TweetIDs

🌎🔗https://github.com/echen102/COVID-19-TweetIDs
The repository contains an ongoing collection of tweets IDs associated with COVID-19.

Twitter COVID-19 Stream

🌎🔗https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/labs/covid19-stream/overview
A streaming endpoint into Twitter Developer Labs.
Returns tweets based on Twitter's internal COVID-19 Tweet annotation and a set of defined parameters Twitter believes deliver a comprehensive view of the conversation around this topic.

COVID-19 Mentions DB Project

🔗https://covid19-mentions-db.com/
Our goal is to collect all mentions to JCOVID-19 starting from December 1, 2019, from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in one database and provide access to this information for all researchers, journalists, and OSINT specialists.