• Maisie Fitzgerald and Catherine Saunders.
• University of Cambridge.
• Br J Gen Pract. 2023 Jul 1; 73 (suppl 1).

BackgroundGoogle searches represent a snapshot of the world's interest in different topics and are reflected by Google Trends (GT). GT has gained recent popularity across various areas of healthcare research of interest to GPs, such as the seasonality of particular physical symptoms and population-level suicide risk. As a real-time data source, GT is appealing to healthcare researchers, but whether it has a place in primary care research remains largely unaddressed.AimTo explore how GT can be used to research topics relating to primary care in order to evaluate its utility as a future research tool and inform primary care researchers and GPs on the uses and implications of GT as a research tool.MethodCollect relative search volume data from GT on topics relating to health behaviours and access to/experiences of primary care in order to evaluate the utility of GT as a tool for future primary care research.ResultsGT was useful for identifying patterns in health behaviours across time but did not offer any useful information on access to/experiences of primary care. Conducting numerous searches on GT identified various limitations, including internet bias and news bias.ConclusionGT is an accessible and vast data source. This study demonstrated the potential for GT to play a role in researching health behaviours. However, this study also revealed key limitations of GT, and caution should be exercised by primary care researchers and GPs when using GT for research.© British Journal of General Practice 2023.

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