It all started with the flu. In 2008, we found that the activity
of certain search terms are good indicators of actual flu
activity. Based on this finding, we launched Google Flu Trends
to provide timely estimates of flu activity in 28 countries.
Since then, we’ve seen a number of other researchers—including
our very own—use search activity data to estimate other real
world activities. However, tools that provide access to search
data, such as Google Trends or Google Insights for Search,
weren’t designed with this type of research in mind. Those
systems allow you to enter a search term and see the trend; but
researchers told us they want to enter the trend of some real
world activity and see which search terms best match that trend.
In other words, they wanted a system that was like Google Trends
but in reverse. This is now possible with Google Correlate,
which we’re launching today on Google Labs. Using Correlate, you
can upload your own data series and see a list of search terms
whose popularity best corres