In this cross-sectional study, GT was used to evaluate Internet search trends during the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide. GT was used to collect data. When a person searches for a term using the Google search engine, GT generates data on how common the query term is. It presents normalized data about anonymous user searches in the form of relative search volumes (RSVs), varying from 0 to 100, where 100 represents the maximum value of searches in a given period.
The comparison strategy was based on standard terms among oral health policies and recommendations regarding paediatric dentistry defined by the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD) and related popular search queries as posted on GT [11 ]. Efforts were made to include terms that are likely to be familiar to people looking for information on dental care. Individuals may not utilise certain dental terminology such as regenerative pulp therapy. Therefore terminology such as, ‘space maintainer’ was included instead of ‘band and loop space maintainer’, and its RSV was higher. The paediatric dentistry-related queries are presented in Table1 . Each term was individually searched using GT. The monthly RSVs and the lists of paediatric dentistry-related queries were included from December 2016 to December 2021 using GT. The GT search parameters used were “Worldwide,” “December 2016–December 2021,” “All categories,” and “Web Search.” The datasets were analyzed using SPSS version 25 (IBM Corp, Armonk, NY, USA). The Shapiro–Wilk test was used to confirm the normality of distribution for each dataset per query. Two separate datasets were obtained, before and after the pandemic. One-way ANOVA was used to determine whether there was a significant difference in RSV scores between the first 2 years of COVID-19 and the first 3 years before COVID-19 worldwide. T-tests were used for bivariate comparisons. For all analyses, p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.
The comparison strategy was based on standard terms among oral health policies and recommendations regarding paediatric dentistry defined by the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD) and related popular search queries as posted on GT [11 ]. Efforts were made to include terms that are likely to be familiar to people looking for information on dental care. Individuals may not utilise certain dental terminology such as regenerative pulp therapy. Therefore terminology such as, ‘space maintainer’ was included instead of ‘band and loop space maintainer’, and its RSV was higher. The paediatric dentistry-related queries are presented in Table
Top relative search volumes of paediatric dentistry related queries
| Paediatric dentistry related diseases and treatments | Search terms with top RSV's |
|---|---|
| Early childhood caries | Baby teeth caries, child teeth caries, baby tooth caries, child tooth caries |
| Kids toothache | Kids toothache, child toothache |
| Dental trauma | Avulsed tooth, fractured tooth, broken tooth, broken teeth |
| Cleft lip and palate | Cleft lip, cleft palate, harelip |
| Root canal on baby teeth | Paediatric pulpotomy, baby root canal, root canal on baby tooth |
| Paediatric restorative dentistry | Hall technique, stainless steel crown, fluoride treatment, atraumatic restorative treatment, kids tooth filling |
| Space maintainer | Band and loop space maintainer, distal shoe space maintainer, transpalatal arch, lingual holding arch |
| Mouthguard | Sports mouthguard, kid mouthguard, child mouthguard |
| Paediatric dentistry | Pedodontist, child dentist, child dentistry, paediatric dentist |
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