What People Googled For Most In The Trying Year Of 2020


12/26/2020



According to the annual "Year in Search" list of Google, more people in 2020 used the query “why” in 2020 more than they did in the year before globally as people sought to make sense of things that they were seeing in the news. Terms such as "why is the NBA postponed?" and "why is toilet paper sold out" were among the top searched “why” queries on Google, the company said in a video released along with the list.
 
The list released by Google features the year's top trending searches and listed the search terms that saw a high spike in traffic over a sustained period of time in 2020 compared to 2019.
 
The trending searches list in the United States was topped by "election results" and "coronavirus" – which was no surprise at all, because people attempted to find answers and know more about the pandemic as well as the very crucial election that was longer than usual partly because of the pandemic.
 
Zoom, Naya Rivera, Chadwick Boseman and PlayStation 5 were also among the top 10 on the list.
 
The top US trending searches were also broken up by Google in a number of categories.
 
In the “news” category, the top search queries were about:
 
The stimulus checks or the payments that were given to millions of Americans as part of the $2.2 trillion congressional coronavirus relief package that was passed in March
 
Iran after the killing of the country’s general Qasem Soleimani in a US airstrike in early January which sparked off a period of tension between the two countries and
 
Murder hornets which were the giant invasive bugs that were spotted in Washington state earlier this year
 
Two of the year's major natural disasters also topped the news category search – the Hurricane Laura which was a Category 4 storm that resulted in death and destruction in Louisiana and Texas, and the Australia bush fires that devastated huge areas of the country and caused the death of approximately 3 billion animals.
 
Some of the prominent losses during the year comprised the most searched terms of the year in other parts of the world, according to Google. That included the death of basketball star Kobe Bryant, the US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and renowned guitarist Eddie Van Halen.  It also included the passing away of George Floyd,
 
During 2020, people also stepped up to help one another in some extraordinary ways despite all of the hardships of the year. Large number of people searched for ways to help the Black Lives Matter movement, Yemen, Beirut and someone having a panic attack, according to the "how to help" section of the list. During the pandemic, there was also greater searching by people into how to donate blood, plasma and N95 masks, among other things.
 
The ways people could cope and could keep themselves entertained this year also topped the list of top trending searches for the year. "Drive in movie theater near me," "virtual EDC rave," "how to cut men's hair at home", and "how to make hand sanitizer" were among the most popular searches on Google.
 
(Source:www.cnn.com)