Web users are desperately seeking the latest news on Swine Flu.

While Twitter shows through its Trendy Topics list that Swine Flu continues to dominate discussion on its micro-blogging site, Comscore published statistics that give more indication of the frenzy surrounding the illness.

The data revealed that 501,000 people conducted 929,000 searches relating to the swine flu outbreak during the week ending 26 April, representing a nearly twenty-fold increase since the previous week.

Of course, many savvy search marketers are capitalising on the opportunity to communicate with concerned consumers. For the week ending 26 April, Comscore observed 271 different advertisers with paid search inventory against these terms.

ITunes application developer IntuApps also cottoned on to the money that can be generated from consumer anxiety over the virus and submitted an application called Swine Flu Tracker to Apple, which will keep iPhone users up to date with the latest WHO threat level and breaking Swine Flu news.

Meanwhile analyst firm Gartner advised business users to act, rather than panic.

"Business continuity management and disaster recovery professionals and other stakeholders should use the widespread concern over the swine flu as an opportunity to prevent their businesses from becoming victims of uncertainty, panic, misinformation and a lack of preparedness to increase enterprise awareness of the potential business impact of a widespread outbreak of disease," said Richard De Lotto, Gartner principal research analyst.

Gartner said that businesses must implement business continuity plans because a true pandemic could cause absenteeism rates of 40 per cent, resulting in severe operational disruptions.

05 May 2009