Greetings from Sao Paulo. I’m in town this week to attend today’s launch of Hitwise Brazil, a new offering from Serasa Experian Marketing Services. In preparation for this event, I’ve been immersed in studying how Brazilian Internet behavior is similar and different from the other markets that we serve.
While I’ve written before about bird flu and swine flu in the past. Today, using our new Brazilian data is the first time we’ve analyzed search queries from a non-English speaking region. The chart below compares searches for “gripe suina” (Portugese for “swine flu”) against the scientific term “H1N1″ and the medical term “Influenza A.”

The initial spike in volume on “gripe suina” occurs when the first cases of swine flu are reported in Mexico and the United States. As we noticed years ago with bird flu, there are different patterns to popular search (swine flu) scientific interest (H1N1) and medical interest (Influenza A). Those differences show-up very clearly in the chart above.
By examining search term variations and where people click when searching on “gripe suina” we can see the shift in user intent from general interest queries in May 2009 that continued to reference and news sites, to August 2009 where there are increased instances of symptom related searches that result in visits to health and medical sites.