19 May,2009 09:22 AM IST | | Balaji Narasimhan
A study by comScore on US consumer search activity says that this was one of the most searched-for items on the Net in April 2009
While we in India were so busy recently with the elections so much so that, on counting day few paid any attention to the fact that Hyderabad saw India's first case of H1N1 flu people in the US are understandably more concerned about the dreaded disease because it has impacted them more.
In fact, a study by comScore found that, during the week ending April 26, 2009, 501,000 people conducted 929,000 searches related to swine flu. According to comScore, this represents a nearly twenty-fold increase versus the previous week for both metrics.
Growing concerns
A look at the pattern of search shows how people got more and more worried about swine flu as time passed, probably because of widespread coverage in the media. From April 6-12, there were just 16,329 searchers, a figure that jumped to 26,666 in April 13-19. From here, there was a massive jump to 501,479 in April 20-26.
The above was based on data that comScore announced on May 1, 2009. On May 14, 2009, comScore released data that showed swine flu concerns had caused a surge in visits to cdc.gov (Centres for Disease Control).
This site, which got 2,371,000 visitors in March 2009, witnessed 5,736,000 visitors in April 2009, a jump of 142 per cent.
While cdc.gov was not the site with the maximum hits this honour went to www.twitter.com, with 17,001,000 unique visitors in April 2009 it was the only site to witness triple-digit growth in April 2009, apart from www.chinaoontv.com.
Cashing on flu
Of course, advertisers will naturally go where the rest of us are going, and comScore says that 'For the week ending April 26, comScore observed 271 different advertisers with paid search inventory against these terms, up from just 73 the previous week and 33 the week before that'.
www.Facesofinfluenza.com with 197,055 paid search ad exposures and AreYouPrepared.com with 88,789 paid search ad exposures led the pack. Paid search ad exposures also grew along with growing concerns that people had about the disease, and so this figure shot up from 77,306 during April 6-12 to 183,030 during April 13-19, and touched a staggering 1,549,560 during April 20-26.
One thing is clear from this growth as the disease has grown, so has the usage of the Internet to understand more about the flu, and advertising has been impacted by the same. As Eli Goodman, comScore search evangelist put it, "When an international issue on the level of the swine flu pandemic presents itself, a paid search strategy enables the timely delivery of important messages to the public. Whether for public safety or to drive product sales, paid search puts the relevant information into consumers' hands at their time of greatest need."
The most popular
What are the most popular sites for swine flu today? When we entered "swine flu" (with the quotes) in Google, these were the first four hits:
1.u00a0https://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/
2.u00a0https://www.cdc.gov/SWINEFLU/KEY_FACTS.HTM
3.u00a0https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swine_influenza
4.u00a0https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_outbreak
QUICK TAKE
>>Americans are using the Web to search for swine flu
>>One of the most visited sites is www.cdc.gov
>>As people search more, advertisers are also cashing in
