Through the Google lens: Search trends July 3-9
This week people had the goal of searching for info on the U.S. victory in the Women’s World Cup, as well as a hat trick of technical difficulties at three major organizations. Let’s kick off the trending topics on Google this week:
Victory for the U.S. women
The U.S. Women’s National team claimed a 5-2 victory over Japan in the final of the World Cup this week, and took home a slew of searches along with their trophy. In fact, U.S. search interest in the final match surpassed interest in Game 6 of this year’s NBA Finals! Keeper Hope Solo and forward Alex Morgan topped the trends charts on Sunday with more than 1 million and 500,000+ searches, respectively. But people were also interested in midfielder Carli Lloyd, who scored a hat trick in the final, including one goal from midfield that sent searches for “carli lloyd goal” spiking more than 1,000 percent. The team was honored with a ticker-tape parade in New York City today.
Ground to a halt
Wednesday, a slew of technical issues caused trouble across the U.S., starting with United Airlines. A network outage grounded planes for more than an hour, affecting almost 5,000 flights, and frustrated travelers turned to Google to learn more, making the airline the top searched term on Wednesday with more than 1 million searches. Meanwhile, trading was suspended for hours at the New York Stock Exchange after a software glitch. Top questions during the outage included “How many times has the NYSE closed?” and “When was the last time the NYSE suspended trading?” Completing the triumvirate of tech troubles, the Wall Street Journal’s website crashed this week as well. The (sort of?) good news is that the three incidents seem to be unrelated to each other—or to hackers.
From plane delays to train delays: In the U.K. Thursday, a strike by London Underground workers caused the first complete shutdown of the Tube in over a decade. As Londoners trudged home or crowded into buses, searchers asked “How much do tube drivers earn?” The strike was over a failed agreement about pay and a new “night Tube” service scheduled to start running in September.
Comic-Con
The annual Comic-Con International started yesterday, bringing comic, superhero and sci-fi fans together in San Diego, Calif. for a long weekend of panels, events and other celebrations of all things (proud) nerd. The top Comic-Con topics this week include “Doctor Who” and the new “Black Ops III: Zombies” video game, but there are movie trailers and TV show previews to appeal to even the least geeky among us. A new clip from the final installment in the “Hunger Games” movie franchise drew 50,000+ searches, while the new trailer for the live-action “Goosebumps” movie coming next year has already garnered more than 6 million views on YouTube.
