Through the Google lens: Search trends March 13-19
Whether you’re glued to the small screen or you’ve got your eyes on the sky this week, search is there to answer your questions. Here’s a look at this week in search:
TV gold
FOX’s “Empire” has built a kingdom of fans during its first season on the air. This week’s finale not only brought the TV show its highest number of viewers—it also had its largest spike in search interest to date with 200,000+ searches Wednesday night. The two-hour finale delivered a king-sized serving of soap opera-esque surprises, ending in a cliffhanger that had fans eager for more (“When does ‘Empire’ season 2 air?” was trending question this week). And “Empire” is making waves in the real-life music industry too: its soundtrack debuted at number one on Billboard’s Top 200 list this week. Here’s a look at the top searched songs:
Moving from TV fiction to fact, news broke last Saturday that real estate scion Robert Durst had been arrested in connection to several unsolved murders. Durst was the subject of “The Jinx,” the HBO documentary that aired its final episode Sunday night—in which Durst appears to confess to the crimes. Needless to say, though the police said the arrest was not connected to the show, the timing was great for HBO. Search interest in Robert Durst increased by 1,700 percent in the U.S.
Spring fever
March Madness tipped off this week, with fans across the nation rushing to fill out their brackets and come up with excuses to be out of the office. Ten of the top 20 searches yesterday were related to college basketball, and people are turning to search to ask important questions like “Who can beat Kentucky?” (They’re undefeated this season.) And everyone wants to know who President Obama is rooting for: his is the most searched celebrity bracket so far.
If your bracket is already busted, you’ve got something else to be happy about: today marks the first day of spring, and the vernal equinox. Even though it’s still cold or even snowy in some spots today, the arrival of spring has people very excited. There were more than 2 million searches for [vernal equinox] yesterday—even more than searches for [march madness live].
Still, the sun’s position over the Equator isn’t the only celestial event that’s got people searching. On Friday, we’ll see both a Supermoon as well as the only total solar eclipse of the year—the first since 2013. Searches for [solar eclipse glasses] are up more than 2,000 percent as people figure out how to catch a glimpse. And an intense solar storm brought the aurora borealis south on Tuesday night, making the Northern Lights visible as far south as Oregon and as far out as outer space. The green lights lit up search as well as the skies: search interest went up more than 1,250 percent this week!
Good eats
Who says it needs to be hot out to eat ice cream? Dairy Queen kicked off its 75th anniversary celebrations on Monday by treating everyone to a free cone, and more than 200,000 searches followed. And it turns out that when it comes to comfort food, ice cream was a better choice this week than the good ol’ blue box. Kraft announced a recall of more than 6 million boxes its classic macaroni and cheese after metal was found in some boxes. There were more than 100,000+ searches for [kraft mac and cheese recall] as people tried to determine whether their pantries were affected.
Tip of the week
Keep up with the NCAA tournament with the Google app. Just say “Ok Google, show me the latest on March Madness” to get real-time scores, in-game and recap videos, and live streams for each game.
