The company is trying to compile information from swine flu-related Google searches in Mexico to map out how the disease is spreading through the country.

The Mexican effort is based on which the company launched last November in the United States. At the time, they had found a connection between people searching for flu information and the number of people who actually have the flu in any given area. "Google Flu Trends may be able to detect influenza outbreaks earlier than other systems because it estimates flu activity in near real time," said Jeremy Ginsberg, one of the engineers on the Google Flu Trends project, during a press conference Wednesday.

Ginsberg acknowledged that the new effort, dubbed Experimental Flu Trends for Mexico">Experimental Flu Trends for Mexico, may produce somewhat faulty data due to the lack of available current information from the Mexican government.

"While we would prefer to validate this data and improve its accuracy, we decided to release an early version today so that it might help public health officials and concerned individuals get an up-to-date picture of the ongoing swine flu outbreak," that went up today, as well. "Our current estimates of flu activity in the U.S. are still generally low as would be expected given the relatively low confirmed swine flu case count. However, we'll be keeping an eye on the data to look for any spike in activity."

The swine flu has been spreading - and spreading fear - across the world in recent days.