In Brief Google Trends was used to determine the relationship between sexually transmitted infection (STI)–related search engine trends and STI rates. Trends seem to be similar to the relative rates of STIs and to regional differences in rates. Search engine trends are an innovative tool to integrate into STI surveillance. This exploratory study sought to determine whether or not sexually transmitted infection (STI)– related search terms on “Google Trends” would be related to trends in STI rates of nationally notifiable STIs.
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Johnson et al. (2013) studied this question.
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