Few search web for e-cigarettes as alternative to smoking

Online searches pertaining to e-cigarette shopping has seen a significant jump, but very few of these are related to vaping health or quitting smoking, a new study of Google search trends has found.

Electronic cigarettes have significantly increased in popularity over the past decade, leaving the public health community to play catch up in terms of trying to understand the motivations and habits of e-cigarette users.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina (UNC) and San Diego State University in US found a significant jump in the popularity of the words “vape” and “vaping,” and a decline in searches related to vaping health and smoking cessation.

“The e-cigarette industry, the media, and the vaping community have promoted the notion that e-cigarettes are an effective device for quitting smoking, yet what we’re seeing is that there are very few people searching for information about that,” said Rebecca S Williams, researcher at UNC.

“They are more commonly searching for terms like ‘buy,’ shop,’ or ‘sale’,” said Williams.

Researchers analysed Google searches related to electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) from 2009 to 2014.

The data showed that the number of ENDS-related searches is rapidly increasing with 8,498,000 searches in 2014 alone, up from only 1,545,000 in 2010. Vaping and vaping-centric terms are also starting to overtake e-cigarette as the popular way to describe ENDS.

While a growing number of searches pertained to purchasing, less than one per cent of searches in 2013 and 2014 related to quitting smoking a traditional combustible cigarette.

Only three per cent of all ENDS searches in 2013 and two per cent in 2014 included terms searching for health information (eg “e-cigarette risks” or “is vaping healthy”).

“ENDS are the first tobacco product born in the online age,” said John W Ayers, from San Diego State University.

“Examining the content of searches can reveal the searcher’s thoughts and continued analysis of Google search trends may fill some knowledge gaps and outline agendas for follow-up survey-based surveillance,” Ayers said.

Researchers broke the data down by type of search vocabulary used and geographic location.

They also looked for strings of search terms that would provide insights into the searcher’s agenda, like “buy e-cigs” might infer that the person planned on buying an e-cigarette.

Analysing Google searches provides unique insights into the thoughts of ENDS users because all of the data is organic and only influenced by the searchers’ wants and their questions surrounding vaping, which is why a decline in the number of searches related to ENDS as a cessation option or queries about the safety of vaping is particularly noteworthy.

“When primed by survey questions, individuals appear to link ENDS with cessation, but in the privacy of their own home, it appears that searches for ENDS and cessation are infrequent,” Williams said.

The research was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.