Google Helps to Spot Flu Outbreaks
Google.org’s Flu Trends (http://www.google.org/flutrends/) tracks when and where questions about flu symptoms are asked all over the country. They have discovered that a large number of flu-related searches from a particular region may be estimating an outbreak of the flu in that region. In fact, last year Google Flu Trends estimated flu levels one to two weeks earlier than the CDC reported them.
The New York Times: “Google Uses Searches to Track Flu’s Spread”
Google.org: “How does this work?“