Using Google Trends to Evaluate the Public Interest to Ocular Diseases and Symptoms during the COVID-19 Pandemic

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MİRZA G. D., Mirza E., Belviranlı S., Adam M., Gündoğan A. O.

Turkish Journal of Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology, cilt.20, sa.1, ss.30-36, 2025 (Scopus)

Özet

Purpose: To investigate the worldwide public interest to the keywords related to ocular diseases and symptoms using Google Trends (GT) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: GT analyzes the relative search volume (RSV) of the searched term in a specific time period and geographic location. GT provides to compare the RSVs of the searched terms in similar periods in different time intervals in specific region. In this study, the RSVs of the selected keywords related to ocular diseases and symptoms between 1st March to 31th June 2020 and 1st March to 31th June 2019 were accessed on GT and data were compared. Results: It was detected that there were no differences in the RSVs of the keywords related to ocular diseases including amblyopia, diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration, and eye infection (p>0.05 for all). It was determined that the RSVs of blepharitis, cataract, conjunctivitis, dry eye, glaucoma, strabismus significantly decreased and the RSVs of retinal detachment, uveitis, eye allergy significantly increased during the COVID-19 pandemic (p<0. 05 for all). Also, there were no differences in the RSVs of the keywords related to ocular symptoms including blurred vision, eye pain, itchy eyes, and lazy eye (p>0.05 for all). It was noted that the RSVs of double vision, eye twitching significantly decreased and the RSVs of red eye increased during the COVID-19 pandemic (p<0.05 for all). Conclusions: This study has demonstrated that the changes of the users’ internet search activity for ocular diseases and symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic according to the previous year.