While coronavirus may be dominating headlines now, the United States – and the world – is more preoccupied with life closer to home, the latest data on Google search trends so far in 2020 shows.
With a whopping 151 million searches, Facebook was the highest-ranking result in the United States, according to a keyword research report by Ahrefs. This was closely followed by YouTube at 142 million; and Amazon at 87 million.
Also, among the top results were ‘Walmart’ and ‘Home Depot’ – hinting a spike in home renovations – and job site ‘Indeed’ – a reflection of the economic crisis.
Various email providers, ‘eBay’, ‘Craigslist’ and ‘Netflix’ rounded out the Top 20 – indicating a strong appetite for social connection, entertainment and retail therapy.
The worldwide results aren’t much different either, with ‘YouTube’, ‘Facebook’ and ‘Gmail’ making up the Top 3.
The data is quite different to 2019, in which searches for sports – like the India versus South Africa cricket match – and natural disasters – like Hurricane Dorian – led search results, but are not surprising given most of the world is at home.
Interestingly, the world’s leading purveyor of free pornography Pornhub has reveal a major surge in ‘coronavirus’ searches on their site (a strange new fetish?)
We’re pleased to see that dating sites like Tinder didn’t rank highly though, suggesting we’re staying off the dating scene and sticking to social distancing guidelines.
Sometimes you’ve just got to take one for the team.
Check out the full lists here.
