Five things to know:
1. The dataset includes searches for more than 400 symptoms including fever and difficulty breathing. The dataset is anonymized and can show where symptom searches are rising by county.
2. Google won’t release the number of specific searches but normalizes the data to a scale of 1 to 100, and the data won’t show specific searches.
3. The dataset has information dating back to 2017 for researchers to compare search levels to previous years. It includes searches in English and Spanish for counties that reach a minimum threshold of searches.
4. Secondary impact searches for terms like anxiety and depression are also part of the dataset.
5. In 2008, Google released a flu tracker tool to examine influenza trends based on searches, but it overestimated the prevalence of the flu and was shuttered in 2015.
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