Trust Google Trends on flu? Then trust that pinup-hot Don Rickles just peaked

The story has itself gone viral: A new Google tool tracks the spread of actual influenza by monitoring Web searches for terms like “flu.” We knew that Google could be handy for tracking things like the recent uptick in interest in prez prospect “Tim Pawlenty.” But now it turns out that by aggregating such virtual searches, Google can also anticipate flu outbreaks in the real world by a week to 10 days.

Google’s motto, “Don’t be evil,” is close enough to Hippocrates’ “First, do no harm.” But trust national health policy to a search engine?

As of this morning, Google Trends, the search-term tracking tool on which this medical breakthrough is based, also reports that the name of ancient comedian “Don Rickles” is the third-most frequently searched phrase in the United States, while “Lucy Pinder,” a British model popular for posing nude, ranks sixth. Drilling down, you discover that the wrinkled Rickles and the Photoshop-smoothed Pinder share the same “Hotness” rating: Mild. And below that, Google Trends says Don Rickles’ peak was seven hours ago. (OK, he was on Jay Leno last night but still, we’re talking decades, not hours.)

If we can’t trust Google Trends on celebs, do we really want to give them the keys to the Centers for Disease Control?

Google users whose searches lead them to the Minnesota Independent don’t tend to cluster around trendy topics like Don Rickles, Lucy Pinder or the flu. For example, at one point this morning, the second-most commonly searched string that brought readers the MnIndy (after “Minnesota Independent”) was “smiley-face killer,” a story that peaked six months ago, but apparently still piques interest among the erudite.

What I’d like Google to explain is why someone in Moscow visited MnIndy this morning after a search for “steller franken.” I’m more worried about that than the flu.