BACKGROUND
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a dramatic effect on people’s lives, health outcomes, and their medical information-seeking behaviors. It is well known that people often turn to online information sources, frequently beginning with asking medical questions of search engines. Understanding how people search for medical information about COVID-19 can tell us a great deal about their shifting interests and, implicitly, the conceptual categories of their search behavior. This paper explores Google searches for COVID-19 information from both public data sources (Google Trends) as well as from Google’s internal search datasets. Of interest is the way in which shifts in search terms reflect various trends of misinformation outbreaks, the beginning of public health information campaigns, and waves of COVID-19 infections
OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study is to describe online search behavior related to COVID-19 vaccines from the beginning of the pandemic until mid-2022.
METHODS
The study analyzes online search behavior in the US from searchers using Google to search for topics related to COVID-19. We examine searches made from January, 2020 through July, 2022 following the initial identification of COVID-19 in the US, through emergency vaccine use authorizations, various misinformation eruptions, the start of public vaccination efforts, and several waves of COVID-19 infections. Google is the dominant search engine in the US accounting for approximately 89 percent of total search volume in the US as of January, 2022. [ref] As such, search data from Google reflects the major interests of public health concerns about COVID, its treatments, and its issues.
RESULTS
COVID search volume was extraordinarily high at the beginning of the pandemic with a large burst of searches in early 2020. After October, 2020, search volume more-or-less fluctuated with overall caseload, but by late 2021, search behavior shifted significantly: searches no longer followed the number of reported cases. Instead, the total number of COVID searches/day fell to a fairly low and consistent level of interest, suggesting a kind of COVID-fatigue or learning effect in searches.
CONCLUSIONS
Tracking and analysis of public information seeking behavior can offer important insights to guide the activity of health care providers, public health advocates, and policy makers. In particular, tracking overall levels of search behavior can serve as a sign of public awareness, interest, and also serve as a marker for the development of topic fatigue. Shifting search patterns between specific topics can inform public health providers about ways in which patients seek actual resources and services. Lack of search interest, particularly in comparison to misinformation, is a warning sign for low public engagement and should sound a call for new or additional messaging approaches.