Due to the Coronavirus Pandemic, Google Search Interest in "Telehealth" Spikes 317%

Before diving into the data, it’s important to first get a better understanding for how the Google Trends tool works.

This blog post from a Google Data Editor provides an excellent explanation. In summation, Google compiles and analyzes almost all of its searches in real-time to provide insight into what the world is interested in at any given moment.

For any given topic or search term, Google normalizes the interest in that topic by measuring the searches for that topic “as a proportion of all searches on all topics on Google at that time and location.” If you want to look at Google Search interest for a specific state, region, or country, Google is “looking at the search interest for that topic in a given region as a proportion of all searches on all topics on Google in that same place (region) and time.”

Google normalizes and measures search interest on a scale from 0 to 100, with 100 being the maximum search interest in a given topic for the time and location selected.

You can then use these search interest numbers to measure percent increase of “a topic’s growth in search interest over a distinct period of time compared to the previous period.”

Here at OnlineDoctor.com, we tracked and compared Google Search interest for two terms, “telehealth” and “doctor near me,” over a two-year time period to understand how the coronavirus pandemic is reshaping the health services industry.

For reference, we only analyzed Google Search data for the U.S.

On March 8, 2020, Google Search interest for the search term “telehealth” clocked in at 24. On March 13, 2020, a national state of emergency was declared in the U.S.

Two days later on March 15, 2020, Google Search interest in the U.S. for the search term “telehealth” surged to 100, indicating maximum consumer interest for the term. 

This means that week-over-week Google Search interest for “telehealth” skyrocketed by 317% immediately after the country went into a nationwide lockdown and the coronavirus pandemic began its domination over any and everything else happening in the world. 

Over this same period (March 8, 2020 to March 15, 2020), Google Search interest for the search term “doctor near me” decreased by 28%. in the U.S.

From its peak on March 15, 2020, Google Search interest in “telehealth” began to descend but it has since stabilized around 20, which is still far higher than any pre-pandemic search interest levels for the term.

For example, on January 13, 2019, Google Search interest for “telehealth” was at 5. Nearly two years later on January 3, 2021, Google Search interest for the same term was at 21, which represents a 320% increase.

What does it mean?

Perhaps the use of telehealth services and online doctors is here to stay as people try to limit their interactions with strangers to reduce their chances of getting exposed to COVID-19 or any other viruses.

Now and when the pandemic is history, nearly all people will have a heightened sense of caution and awareness when it comes to their own health and the spreading of germs and diseases.

That’s just what happens when a pandemic ravages the entire world and kills over 2 million people.

As a result, in-person visits to doctor offices, which are typically filled with sick people and contagious germs, may be greatly reduced and replaced by telehealth appointments with online doctors.

Additionally, people are now used to doing things virtually, from online learning to online doctor appointments, and many even prefer it. This too will contribute to the rise of online doctors at the expense of traditional in-person medical visits.

All this being said, we still won’t know for certain that telehealth services and online doctors are actually eating away at the market share held by in-person doctor appointments until the pandemic has been over for at least a full year and we can go back and visit Google Search trends to see if “telehealth” search interest has fallen back to around 5 or maintained its current level around 20.

But it certainly seems to be trending towards the latter, especially when you consider recent data published by the CDC on the rise of telehealth services.

Before hopping into the CDC survey, other data from the government agency showed there was a 154% increase in telehealth visits during the last week of March 2020 compared to the same time last year.

This data supports the notion that online doctors are on the rise as a result of the pandemic, but a separate survey from the CDC, published on November 2, 2020, found that there’s been a significant increase in the number of doctors that are providing telehealth services to their patients.

As the chart indicates, just 14.1% of poll participants had a healthcare provider (doctor) that offered telemedicine services prior to the pandemic.

Now though, 36.6% of poll participants have a healthcare provider that offers telemedicine services, which is an increase of 22.5 percentage points.

The CDC survey demonstrates that more doctors are adapting to the pandemic by becoming online doctors and offering telehealth services. This will only speed up the trend in which telehealth and online doctor services become more popular at the expense of in-person doctor visits.

This becomes doubly true if people enjoy their online doctor visits so much that they then prefer telehealth services over in-person doctor appointments and begin opting for doctors that offer virtual services over doctors that don’t in a post-pandemic world.

Moreover, doctors and health professionals may soon discover that they themselves prefer doing telehealth appointments and may even find that being an online doctor is more cost-effective and easier to run as a business compared to an in-person clinic.

If that’s the case, we will surely see telehealth and online doctor services catchup to traditional, in-person visits in terms of medical market share in a world after the coronavirus.

As a fun and interactive last section of this study, we dove back into Google Search Trends to see how “telehealth” search interest compares to “doctor near me” search interest on a state-by-state level.

For reference, the tables you will find below display the percentage of searches each search term comprises when only compared against the other search term.

For example, in the year leading up to the pandemic (January 9, 2019 to January 9, 2020) 37% of all searches in South Dakota that were either “telehealth” or “doctor near me” were searches for “telehealth” while 63% were searches for “doctor near me.”

Search the table and its two tabs to see how your state searched for either “telehealth” or “doctor near me” both before and during the pandemic.

How have Google Search behaviors in your state changed over the last two years for the applicable search terms?

Across the board, you can see how all states have increased their searches for “telehealth” over the last year compared to the year prior.

For example, just 4% of searches in Oklahoma prior to the pandemic were for “telehealth” compared to 96% being for “doctor near me.” But in the year of the pandemic, those percentages changed to 34% and 66%, respectively.

It wasn’t surprising to see states that are either rural and spread out, like South Dakota, Nebraska, and Montana, or states that are isolated, like Alaska and Hawaii, with the highest percentages for “telehealth” searches, no matter the year.

Folks in these states have been used to telehealth services and online doctors even before the pandemic.

But now as we head into the future, it’s looking like people from all states are also going to be getting used to telehealth appointments and online doctors because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The data used in this report was collected from two sources. The first of those being Google Trends, which compiles and analyzes almost all Google searches in real-time to provide insight into what the world is interested in at any given moment.

For any given topic or search term, Google normalizes the interest in that topic by measuring the searches for that topic “as a proportion of all searches on all topics on Google at that time and location.”

Google normalizes and measures search interest on a scale from 0 to 100, with 100 being the maximum search interest in a given topic for the time and location selected.

When using Google Trends to complete this study, two search terms were analyzed on a national and state level: “telehealth” and “doctor near me.” Search term data for those terms as far back as January 9, 2019 and as recent as January 9, 2021 was looked at to complete this study.

With the applicable search terms and time ranges applied, Google Search interest data was pulled and downloaded exactly as it was found in Google Trends and then used in this report unchanged.

This process was completed on January 9, 2021.

The second source used in this report was a survey completed by the Centers for Disease Control that was last updated on November 2, 2020. A full methodology and explanation of that survey can be found by visiting the CDC website here. Data from that survey was unchanged when used in this report.