If you ever doubted the power of search engines, the usefulness of key words or how important both have become in our daily lives, ponder this news.

Using a huge database of search terms — such as cough, fever and aches and pains – entered by sick people who go Internet medical sites before seeing the doctor, search engine Google claims it can predict flu outbreaks.

Google says its huge data pile of sickly search terms can be pinpoint tracked by region, is much more current than any institutional health surveys, and can sniff out flu epidemics even before public health officials or Centers for Disease Control knows there is a problem.

Here’s a plot of those sick search terms across the entire United States from June 2008 … through projections to May 2009. Note the predicted spikes in December and late February.

The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom welcomed this Health + Technology news with a bit of Big Brother paranoia:

Google already has a window into our souls through our internet searches and it now has insight into our ailing bodies too.

For good or for “ill,” here is the rest of Google Hits to Warn of Flu Epidemics .