Through the Google lens: Search trends March 20-26
Searches for March Madness are still surviving and advancing, but this week brought with it a host of other stories to spur your search questions. Here’s a look at what people were searching for this week:
Germanwings Flight 9525
On Tuesday, Germanwings Flight 9525 crashed in the French Alps, killing all 150 people who were onboard. In the wake of the tragedy, people around the world have turned to search to learn more about the crash and subsequent investigation. Early searches included questions about Lufthansa, Germanwings’ parent company, and about the type of plane that had crashed; search interest in the Airbus A320 family spiked 100x in the first four hours. But after investigations revealed that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz appears to have deliberately locked himself in the cockpit and flown the plane into a mountain, the questions got more specific. People asked questions like “How do you access the plane’s cockpit?” and worried: “Is it safe to fly after the Germanwings crash?” and “Is flying becoming more dangerous?”
Presidential politics
Election Day 2016 is more than a year-and-a-half away, but the presidential race is already underway. On Monday, Senator Ted Cruz announced his candidacy. The Texas Republican is known for his fervent opposition to the Affordable Care Act, in particular a 21-hour filibuster-style speech on the floor of the Senate in 2013 (at one point, he read aloud from Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham). Searchers turned to the web to answer all kinds of questions about Cruz and his beliefs, sending searches for [cruz liberty], [cruz obamacare] and [cruz wiki] to spike more than a thousand percent in the last 30 days. The top questions, though, were around whether Cruz is eligible to become President because he was born in Canada. (The answer is yes, BTW.)
Pop culture mania
This week Zayn Malik confirmed he is leaving boy band One Direction, sending teens worldwide into a tailspin as they asked (and searched): “Why is Zayn leaving One Direction?” The British star said that he is leaving to “be a normal 22-year-old...out of the spotlight,” which may be tough given there were more than a million searches for him on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the rest of the band will go on without him—in fact, search interest in One Direction tours spiked 5x in the U.S. the day of the announcement.
If freaking out about Zayn isn’t your thing, maybe freaking out about “A” is? The mysterious villain of the ABC Family show Pretty Little Liars was revealed—sorta—on Tuesday night, leading to hundreds of thousands of searches for the show. We won’t spoil it here, even though it was frankly a little hard to miss amidst the outcry. Let’s just say, the truth is out there. ;)
Finally, it’s barely spring but it’s already time to start thinking about your summer festival agenda. The line-ups of both San Francisco’s Outside Lands and Chicago’s Lollapalooza music festivals were announced this week. The top festival searched in each state breaks down almost exclusively along geographic lines and leaves us wondering: Are Massachusetts residents big Elton John fans?
Taking charge of your health
In a New York Times op-ed, Angelina Jolie revealed that she had undergone surgery to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes to prevent cancer. This was the second preventative surgery for Jolie (she wrote about her double mastectomy in 2013), who made this decision because she carries a mutation in her BRCA1 gene, putting her at high risk for breast and ovarian cancer. There were more than 100,000 searches for Angelina Jolie on Tuesday, and people turned to the web to ask related questions about women’s health and cancer prevention.
Tip of the week
Who says National Puppy Day has to be just once a year? When you’re need of a furry pick-me-up, just ask the Google app “Ok Google, show me pictures of puppies.” Smiles are practically guaranteed.
