Mapping Awareness (Google Trends)

It's not a perfect proxy, but maybe good enough as a first order approximation of it: google trend for tinnitus.

Not particularly encouraging unfortunately.

 

Interesting. Two questions:

1) What does that trend look like compared to something like Alzheimer's? (or some other disease/illness/condition of your choice)

2) Do you have the actual data in a spreadsheet?

 

1) Why don't you try it? I provided the link in my original message. Alzheimer's curve has a similar first half, but it's trending higher in the second half (recent past), while tinnitus stays relatively flat.

2) No, it's a chart generated by google. It doesn't look like the data can be exported. The unit is not very specific anyway: it looks like it's normalized somehow, because the numbers all look to be between 0 and 100. We can tell, for example, that Alzheimer's trend is about twice as much as Tinnitus', but I don't have the detailed explanation about what those numbers actually mean, so we have to take it with a grain of salt.

 

Man cancer is kicking our ass. I think we have a PR issue. If you look at sites like ATA, they got a bunch of old people sailing and playing golf. Nobody cares about old people, and those old farts look happy they got tinnitus. We need a campaign with a soldier alone in his room "holding his ears", saying "I can still hear the war, ringing in my heard. Please help it stop!"

Hell, we can even pair up with cancer. I read on a few forums where people on chemo got tinnitus. There could be a spot where this young kid is all hooked up on a chemo chair wearing a cap and he says "now I just wish the ringing would stop."

Also young pregnant women or those just given birth. There seems to be a lot of those postpartum chronic tinnitus cases. That's some life threatening stuff right there. Someone is not coming out alive from that.

I could be the Don Draper of tinnitus if I had a budget.

 

So many thoughts, so little action.

As usual.

 

Clever I must say!
This is what we need, fresh creative ideas that are not hard to realise!

@Markku and @Steve have you read this post?

 

I can make photos, that was part of my previous job. Thought about that before. Like showing people in every day situations (like going to the supermarket or restaurants, playing with kids, etc) with earmuffs on, isolated from other people who don't even know a condition such as hyperacusis exist.

 

Maybe do a sample and see what others think!
Sounds good though!

 

Since the trend is falling I'm wondering if there's a cure we didn't hear about

 

I wish...

 

Positive news: 2.5 years later... the awareness curve looks better! About 10% YOY increase in the past 3 years! (I measured peak to peak)

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=tinnitus

Notice the patterns of "yearly mountain": given when the peak happens, I imagine it has to do with the Feb "Awareness Week" and related activities.

 

Sadly "tinnitus cure" seems much less popular.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=tinnitus,tinnitus cure

 

That is normal because "tinnitus cure" is a subset of "tinnitus" where the word "cure" was added to the query, so by definition you're going to get a smaller number of results.

Look at the trend of "tinnitus cure" in isolation: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=tinnitus cure

That paints a different story.

 

Yes, but quite how much smaller is the sad part.

 

The non-existent Thomas Coleman and his "Tinnitus Miracle" is the 3rd most popular search.

 

It's not. There's a ton of words that can be added to "tinnitus". "cure" is just one out of many, so "how much smaller" is absolutely to be expected, and nothing to derive any positive or negative feelings about.

It will be exactly the same output no matter what you put in: try cancer & cancer cure:
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=cancer,cancer cure

In other words, it means absolutely nothing when it comes to interest in tinnitus cures. Nothing to be sad about.

 

I heard some claims that tinnitus is increasing significantly among the population. Is this true?

I checked Google Search Term Analytics and there certainly does seem to be an increase in people searching for tinnitus, up about 50% in 5 years. Compared to "headaches" which is up 25% as a comparison:



And if tinnitus is increasing, why? iPods? Concerts? EMF / EMR?

 

I'd like to think it's related more to awareness increasing around tinnitus but I did hear a discussion on the radio recently which identified young males in their 20s and up as being the most effected these days.

So you're probably right around it being iPods, Concerts, loud music in cars etc.

 

@Steve0 @Cojackb

I have a niece, 22 years old, who has been going to night clubs, concerts and listening to loud music in her car and also on iPod... Last week she told me she has started to hear a very low buzzing noise in her ears.

Lucky at the moment it has gone away, but I warned her and told her to tell her friends, your hearing will further deteriorate if you do not protect your ears from loud noises...

I used to do all this when younger. No iPods though when I was younger! Plus before my nursing career I worked part time in a noisy environment. No hearing protection was given out either back then... I had never even heard of tinnitus.

Most young people are not even aware of tinnitus. If only there were better warnings about this.