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Don't know about you, but pictures of bed bugs make my skin crawl! As it turns out it seems as though we have a resurgence of bed bug infestations over the past few years.According to the National Pest Management Association bed bug calls to pest control companies for bed bug problems are up 70% in the past 5 years. Of course you may doubt the objectivity of an organization of companies who treat bed bugs and other bugs, but there is other evidence from various health departments in cities like New York who are finding more real bed bug infestations. Weird that a problem that was for the most part eradicated 50 years ago through the widespread use of DDT and now the bed bugs are back! Last month, the EPA held a Bed Bugs Summit to discuss the issue and believe it or not there is a bill being introduced in congress, the so called... you guessed it... "Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite Act of 2008" did not get passed last year in the house but it is being brought back up this year. I did not make that up, seriously!
Search Volume Analysis for Bed Bugs
So I was curious of course how the google search volume looked for various bed bug related terms such as "bed bug", "bed bugs", "bedbugs", etc... As you know I really love looking at google search volume because it can be so indicative of real behavior. Much has been written about how google trends can pick up on the flu season before the CDC by watching search volume for flu related terms. So I think the same thing applies here. The biggest watchout is whether any increase in search volume is due to just hysteria or real symptoms and infestations. So I did do some of my own method of correction to cancel out some hot news item related spikes in the data. So here is the historical trend for bedbug related searches:
Very interesting chart and it makes alot of sense. The National Pest Management Association has stated that calls to pest control companies has gone up 70% in the past 5 years and here you see search volume going up about 100% in the past 5 years. Pretty close in my opinion. The other interesting thing in the data is the seasonality with bed bug searches peaking in the summer months which would make sense with bed bugs as most insects being more active in the hotter months.
A Bed Bug Forecast
So I then of course fit a forecasting model to the bed bug search volume. This was a seasonal ARIMA model and it forecasts that the bed bug searches will increase again this summer. This is based on not the overall trend increase as you might guess, but more the fact that the first few months of this year are higher than last and continuing the seasonal behavior then forecasts a higher peak this summer than last.
So if the search volume does indeed correlated to real bed bug problems as I think it does to some degree then this would forecast a continued increase in bed bug problems.
One last google search info nugget: The top 3 cities that are searching for bed bugs during the last month are Cincinnati, New York, and Newark NJ. As it turns Cincinnati has been battling these problems for a while. Here is a quote from a LA times article on the problem:
When complaints about the bloodsucking insects first trickled in to Cincinnati's public health department three years ago, officials assumed it was an anomaly -- or perhaps the overactive imagination of a bug-phobic public.
But that trickle of complaints has grown into a flood: A recent public survey found that 1 in every 6 people here has had a run-in with the biting bugs in the last 12 months.
I will keep an eye on the bed bug search volume and let you know when it looks like it starts coming down. Until then, nighty night...
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