My Christmas tradition of writing a humorous summary of the year’s Google search trends turns 6 in 2020. And in all this time, it’s the first time I haven’t had a special motivation to write it.
The reason is obvious: I imagined the trend would be closely linked to the event that has changed our lives: the COVID-19 pandemic.
It must be acknowledged that it has been a complex year where humanity has faced great challenges and where fear has prevailed.
That fear, from my point of view, does not help. It paralyzes, freezes, and causes people to show their most selfish facets.
I am convinced that the media (at least in Spain) generate a sense of alarm and fear due to their tendency to present current events and COVID statistics like war reports. Is it really necessary? Forgive me if I am ignorant in this regard, but I don’t believe it.
That factor, coupled with fake news spread across social media, where the most brilliant “know-it-all” shares indiscriminately in groups and WhatsApp, fuels a widespread hopelessness that adds to the fear and uncertainty inherent in an unprecedented situation.
If we add governments trying to deal with an unknown situation, a disease that is not yet fully understood.
A disastrous communication management where it was common to be unaware of the regulations themselves due to excessive complexity in the discourse, we have the perfect Molotov cocktail for search trends that are not just strange, but extremely strange.
Although I admit that even without a pandemic, these trends always surprised me a lot; imagine now.
Anyway, this year I will be more acidic than in previous years, because I cannot emotionally detach myself from the general situation.
So, as always and first, here is the list of all these trend posts:
- 2019 in Google searches
- 2018 in Google searches
- Most searched on Google 2017
- 2016 search trends
- How to be happy and have no gas in 2015
2020 Trends
Google always groups searches into different families or categories. They have been improving the classification to avoid mixing “odd” topics. This year we have:
- General searches
- Recipes
- Education
- How to…
- Personalities
- Why…
- Movies, television and series
- When
- Music
- Plus the silly video that tries to move us in a Mr. Wonderful style.
This year, I believe the classification has improved, allowing us to better analyze trends. Graphically:
General searches
How could it not be first? I think no one is surprised that coronavirus took the top spot. An undisputed leader, unfortunately.
Second place goes to the American elections. I always say that the importance of the US elections in the rest of the world demonstrates the notable influence of the American country on other nations.
I don’t recall seeing interest in, for example, the Malaysian elections. That, coupled with Trump’s colorful character, makes it sneak in as the second search.
Third place? Of course, the quintessential topic of 2020 due to the pandemic: remote work and education. The third search was for Classroom, an educational service developed by Google itself that helped students continue their classes.
Ah, sports… that omnipresent topic in these searches. The first religion in Spain, football, takes fourth place with La Liga.
Fifth position: Kobe Bryant, “famous American basketball player who played twenty seasons in the NBA, all of them with the Los Angeles Lakers” (Wikipedia), who suffered a fatal helicopter accident with his daughter and 7 other people. These tragedies often make their way into annual search trends.
The sixth position raised many questions for me as it is very generic. Tiger? The animal? A footballer? I think the search is inspired by: 3D tiger. One of those cool options Google gives us on the results pages if you search for it on your mobile.
Searching for an animal + 3D generates very interesting results, with the possibility of playing with augmented reality.
I had tried it with the bear, and it’s really fun, for both children and adults, to recreate a figure in your own environment. You can see how much fun I have with the tiger:
Seventh position for Zoom, one of the big winners of this pandemic, whose video calling technology has allowed people to connect and grow their company to unforeseen levels. A source of controversy, first for security, and currently, for filtering confidential information.
Be that as it may, it must be acknowledged that it is a very useful service and offers more stable connections in video calls compared to other similar services.
Eighth and ninth positions, once again for sports, which every year hold relevant positions in these trends with the NBA and the Champions League respectively.
I believe Google’s augmented reality functionality has been a protagonist because I highly doubt the population suddenly developed an animalistic awareness to search so much about tigers and sharks in the same year. So, with this animal in position 10, we conclude the general search ranking.
Absolute protagonist: pandemic, remote work and study technologies, home entertainment with augmented reality, and of course: sports.
Recipes
I find it interesting that this year Google decided to give a special category to the world of cooking, which normally appeared in the how-to sections or general trends.
I understand that there has been an increase in home cooking because there weren’t many other options, especially during complicated periods of the pandemic at the beginning of the state of alarm.
Without wanting to mention all the recipes, which are in the screenshot, homemade bread, sourdough, churros, homemade donuts, homemade cookies, egg flan, then they are surprised that the rates of diabetics, coronary diseases, and overweight increase every year.
I don’t see a single recipe for any type of salad dressing, healthier recipe, or one that doesn’t involve doughs, yeasts, and sugars. But we take care of ourselves against the coronavirus: Quite an irony.
Let’s innocently assume that it’s NOT just that we like to eat badly, but that it was a reflection of the anxiety of not being able to go out and visit a cafe normally, right? 😉
Education
Another category that gained its own entity due to the pandemic. The education sector is one of humanity’s most important, and one of the most conservative.
Educational systems haven’t changed much over the centuries, and with the pandemic, they have been forced to seek solutions. But we already know how some public bodies can be, where change is like moving an elephant’s leg. It’s difficult, very difficult.
So these search trends reflect not only online class technologies like Classrooms or Aules, but also legal aspects with the controversial Celaá Law or even specific portals like the virtual secretariat of educational centers.
It seems the pandemic caught the traditional education sector off guard. Many have managed to adapt agilely and positively, with tremendous effort. Others have gotten stuck in bureaucracy and senseless regulations.
I believe it’s a positive aspect of the pandemic that it forced many sectors of society to seek solutions that go far beyond technology.
The real change is cultural and in the way things are done, and I highly doubt the major failure is exclusively due to economic issues, as more simplistic views often suggest.
I only hope that institutions, city councils, and states will responsibly address the educational challenges of a Post-COVID world. They owe it to the younger generations.
How did you…?
I always say, this is one of my favorite sections. It reflects many diverse interests of the population. Let’s look at the ranking screenshot:
The first was inevitable: How to make a fabric mask? Normal, it has become the fashion accessory.
And they have surely come to stay; I just hope that the end of the pandemic also means a decrease in the tacky masks sold everywhere.
I won’t even comment on the incorrect ways of using them, nor their true protective capacity for oneself or others, of many (non-medical) masks that are selling like hotcakes. It’s an issue that reflects the true incoherence of human society.
Nevertheless, it has served a positive purpose in reducing virus transmission, so it will surely become a symbol.
How to make homemade bread? A very valid question, especially when bakeries stopped operating, and it was difficult to supply households. In that regard, I consider myself fortunate as I used to make homemade bread with the famous Lidel bread maker, so I very much understand this search trend.
How is coronavirus transmitted? Valid question. Little to add to the generalized fears and the search for information about the disease.
In fourth place: How to make hand sanitizer? Well, more of the same. Protection? Savings?
Fifth: How are the US elections going? It’s truly curious that the elections of another country generate so much interest for us. As I said at the beginning of the post, this reflects the notable influence that the American state has on our own values as a society, both politically, economically, and technologically, and culturally in the media we consume. Incredible!
Sixth: How to make sourdough? Very related to the first position of making homemade bread. Also, the topic of sourdough and returning to origins, I don’t think it was just a culinary trend, but rather due to the temporary shortage of yeast during the state of alarm.
Seventh: The other major pandemic-related issue at the labor level: What is an ERTE and how does it affect workers? I think we are still far from truly understanding the changes that are coming at the labor and professional level. Let’s hope for the best, and I am sorry if you find yourself in the situation of having lost your job due to the pandemic.
How to know if I have coronavirus? Well, a valid question given the rate of infections, and it’s very significant that you search for it on Google first rather than with your family doctor.
How to make churros? So many bad habits in terms of diet, right? We are so used to churros for breakfast that without cafes, we burst.
It’s curious that we’re interested in North American politics, but we don’t adopt their breakfast habits from those latitudes, for example, and we keep eating churros, which are delicious, yes, but probably not great for your glutes and arteries every day.
Finally, we enter the other essential point of the pandemic (unfortunately): How to apply for the minimum vital income?
Why?
Another one of my favorite sections. These questions surprise me a lot. I won’t mention the music, personalities, and cinema, TV, and series sections, for which I’ll leave you the links if you want to delve deeper, but they are sections from which I gather little information.
We continue with the coronavirus dominating the ranking, asking why it’s called that. A very valid and interesting question, almost as much as the next one:
Why do people buy toilet paper? Just as the coronavirus has exposed inconsistencies and foolishness in human society, the toilet paper issue is a good indicator of this lack of collective intelligence.
Leisure can be a source of inspiration, boredom, or… free time to ask silly questions like: Why do mosquitoes bite? Because they were bored during the state of alarm and are picking on you for asking silly questions on Google.
The following questions deserve quick answers:
- Why isn’t Valencia moving to phase 1? = No idea, if you like football and want to complete this post better, you can leave the answer in the comments.
- Why did Paquirri and Carmen Ordoñez separate? = No idea, nor am I interested. The fact that you ask it should be an indicator for you to examine your life. I am not interested in this answer in the comments.
- Why is the sky blue? = I hope it’s a valid question about the environment and not the typical melancholic question of why my girlfriend left me, which sounds very similar.
- Why does hair fall out? = A very valid question, to which we can dedicate some reflection time during the pandemic. Maybe we’ll find the solution to baldness.
- Why do feet swell? = Well, this question is better than the one from 2015 where we asked why we had gas. Good luck in finding the answer, Google may know a lot, but I don’t know if it knows enough about us to establish the cause. Were you the same person looking to make churros?
- The last two questions deserve a special mention from the audience: Why do I have a headache? Why do I sweat so much? = If Google, with all the data it has on us, can’t answer this, then what’s the point of giving it my data? So, take the opportunity to recommend a better deodorant, because with so much sweat, at least smell good, right?
When?
We conclude the review with “when.” A question that has accompanied us since time immemorial. The ranking screenshot:
Oh, consumer society… the coronavirus isn’t over yet, and the first question is: When is Black Friday?
As I always say, it’s cool to shop that day if it means savings for you. But sometimes the promotions aren’t as good as they seem. I always take advantage of that day too.
The second one made me laugh: When do hairdressers open? A very valid question; luckily, the pandemic caught me with short hair, so I didn’t suffer in that regard.
When is the ERTE paid? in third position, as we see, COVID and its consequences continue to dominate all searches.
When does the State of Alarm end? I’m still asking myself. It’s not to criticize the government or the Ministry of Health, but I can’t find anyone who can correctly translate the regulations.
There is disastrous communication that means most of the time we don’t clearly know what is allowed and what isn’t.
Amidst this confusion, the famous phases, etc., I still don’t understand. I believe that this confusion in the state’s communication means that the rest of the questions in this ranking are related to the coronavirus, in order:
- When does the lockdown in Spain end? = I still don’t know.
- When do gyms open?
- When can one travel to another province? = I still don’t know.
- When do the ITV (vehicle inspections) open?
- When can children go outside? = You can’t imagine how many times I asked myself that too.
- When does Phase 2 begin? = I don’t even know what phase we’re in now.
Final Conclusions
As we might imagine, and unfortunately, the coronavirus has clearly dominated all searches. That’s why I mentioned my discouragement in continuing the tradition this sixth year.
I only hope that if you are reading (or listening to) this post, you and your family are well and are not part of the negative statistics of COVID.
As always, I leave you with Google’s emotional video that compiles the trends, although it’s always more focused on the US, as is logical:
I have to admit that, personally and professionally, this has been a good year, although painful for all that it has entailed.
I am one of those optimists who usually sees the glass half full, and the pandemic has not generated fears or anxiety in me. It was more the handling of information by the media and governments, and the tensions “felt” on the street, that generated it.
I have the impression, although it is obviously a subjective view, that people are more tense and there is more anxiety; I’m sure I have it too, even if I don’t perceive it.
Let’s hope this stage of humanity comes to an end soon, and we can resume our lives, and although I doubt it will be exactly the same as before COVID, may it be a better stage where we appreciate more what we had and almost always took for granted.
Merry Christmas, and I hope that 2021 and its searches are not dominated by viruses, pandemics, or diseases of any kind.
Live long and prosper!
NOTE: As I did last year, I will use this content for a chapter of the podcast: SEO for WordPress, so if you want to listen to an audio version of the post, you know where to go 😉
