Google is on the flu like a geek with a new algorithm.

The Internet company has announced it will employ its search engines to help the Centers for Disease Control track the flu.

The CDC has its own tracking system, but it takes one to two weeks to collect and release the data, according to Jeremy Ginsberg and Matt Mohebbi, the Google software engineers who blogged about Google's new endeavor. Google queries, they said, can be counted more quickly.

Google officials compared their aggregated queries against data provided by the CDC and found there is a close relationship between the frequency of the search queries and the number of people who are experiencing flu-like symptoms each week.

Americans who fall ill with the flu tend to search for information online before they contact their doctors.

"If we tally each day's flu-related search queries, we can estimate how many people have a flu-like illness," said Ginsberg and Mohebbi. "Based on this discovery, we have launched Google Flu Trends, where you can find up-to-date influenza-related activity estimates for each of the 50 states in the U.S."

The Google Flu Trends map on Wednesday showed that residents of Maine, Delaware, Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi and Hawaii had been searching keywords and phrases associated with the flu, such as "flu symptoms," "muscle aches" and "fever."