Dr. Google, I am in Pain-Global Internet Searches Associated with Pain: A Retrospective Analysis of Google Trends Data

We aimed to rank the most common locations of pain among Google users globally and locally and analyze secular and seasonal trends in pain-related searches in the years 2004-2019. We used data generated by Google Trends (GT) to identify and analyze global interest in topics (n = 24) related to locations of pain and how these progressed over time. We analyzed secular trends and time series decomposition to identify seasonal variations. We also calculated the interest in all topics with reference to the relative search volume (RSV) of Abdominal pain. Google users were most commonly interested in Headache (1.30 [times more frequently than Abdominal pain]), Abdominal pain (1.00), and Back pain (0.84). Headache was the most frequent search term in n = 41 countries, while Abdominal pain was the most frequent term in n = 27 countries. The interest in all pain-related topics except Dyspareunia increased over time. The sharpest increase was observed for Abdominal pain (5.67 RSV/year), and Toothache (5.52 RSV/year). Most of the topics revealed seasonal variations. Among pain-related topics, Headache, Abdominal pain, and Back pain interested most Google users. GT is a novel tool that allows retrospective investigation of complaints among Internet users.