Guy Shares A 2020 Google Search Trends Infographic And It Sums Up 2020

2020 has been quite a wild year. And while the coronavirus pandemic has been the main focus and reason behind this wildness, it wasn’t the only thing that happened and was a point of conversation this year.

Roshaan Khan compiled an insightful infographic based on Google Trends that provides a retrospective of some of the most notable things that happened this year. And while some entries look like they happened so long ago, others, like the coronavirus, were a constant and still feel like a very fresh deal.

2020’s been wild, and it’s even more wild to see a retrospective of its most popular searches

Image credits: Roshaan Khan

Now, a couple of things to note before we dive into the meat of things. Even though these are global trends, many of them pertain mostly to the US and to some extent India, as it’s all based and filtered out by top search results.

Also, when this graph first popped up on Reddit, the commenters noted that the data relates to itself, but it is definitely based on absolute numbers—just that Google itself doesn’t release those numbers.

Reddit user Roshaan Khan compiled a concise chronological online search chart based on Google Trends

Image credits: Roshaan Khan

So, the graph is set up in chronological order, listing search terms from top to bottom, sorted by month from left to right.

The year started off with a spike in Kobe Bryant searches, following his tragic death, then moving on to India VS New Zealand, who were competing in the World Test Cricket Championship, and finally Harvey Weinstein, who was convicted of sexual assault charges in late February.

March came around and so did the coronavirus. The pandemic started sweeping the world and so search terms like coronavirus, coronavirus symptoms, coronavirus update, and death started trending. Then there was also the hantavirus scare, but it left as fast as it came around.

The year started off with Kobe’s death and quickly moved on to all things coronavirus

Image credits: Roshaan Khan

Now, the pandemic as a conceptual set of keywords left the top search spots, but it was everything else that was related to it that followed: Google Classroom and Zoom for distant teaching and meeting, worries about unemployment, the stimulus check, and, of course, masks.

This was also around the time the world had gotten used to the pandemic and moved on to other things, starting with George Floyd and the BLM movement. If things weren’t bad enough, the Beirut explosion also happened soon after, sending a shockwave of reaction throughout the entire world.

Come the end of the year and it all looks quite normal. Tesla stocks, TikTok, Indian Premier League, 4 months of election season googling (Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and U.S. Election Results), and then, ending the year, talks of a coronavirus vaccine started rising.

Following the pandemic, there were also related entries like Zoom, unemployment, masks, and stimulus checks

Image credits: Roshaan Khan

Now, these are just a few keywords that were trending, but Google has also provided top 10 lists of a handful of search categories, two of which, general searches and news, were dominated by coronavirus.

Tom Hanks was top searched actor, Ryan Newman was top searched athlete, Parasite was top searched movie, Among Us was top searched game, Tiger King was top searched TV show, and Joe Biden was top searched person.

After that, it seems like the world went back to normal with TikTok, Tesla Stock and US elections trending

Image credits: Roshaan Khan

And these are besides all of the other significant events of the year that apparently didn’t make it into any list, like the Australian wildfires, Hong Kong protests, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s announcement that they are stepping down, murder hornets, and many more.

The chart went viral on Reddit, garnering nearly 80,000 upvotes with over 2,500 comments and over a hundred Reddit awards. Though many were spouting jokes about all of the interesting correlations that can be drawn from this, overall most agreed that it has been a pretty crappy year. If it wasn’t obvious at this point.

Image credits: Roshaan Khan

Here’s the entire diagram in context

Image credits: Roshaan Khan

What are your thoughts on this? What are some positive things that happened during this otherwise not-so-good year? Let us know in the comment section below!