Canadians appear to be shifting their focus from researching swine flu and its associated symptoms to researching the vaccine and locations for the shot. While the search term “swine flu symptoms’ continues to dominate flu related searches, the share of searches for “swine flu symptoms” declined by 49% last week.
At the same time, a number of search terms that indicate concern over the safety of the vaccine have entered the top Canadian search terms containing the word “flu”. For example, last week, the search terms “flu shot side effects” and “sde effects of h1n1 flu shot” joined the top 100 search terms that include the word “flu”. The search term “swine flu vaccine ingredients” (also among those top 100) saw searches more than double last week.
The search term “gelsemium” was the #1 fast moving search term last week.Gelsemium is being promoted as a homeopathic cure for the flu.
Despite much hype about vaccine shortages and long waits at clinics, searches for “flu shot locations” and “flu clinics” actually decreased last week. The peak of swine flu season is now expected in late November. It will be interesting to see how Internet searches continue to change over the coming weeks.