Google has released its “Year in Search” list with 2020?s most-searched terms, breaking the results down into different categories.
India has seen an upsurge in internet usage in the last few years, driven by mobile internet users. Indians in 2020 used the internet like never before, and of course all thanks to COVID-19. With many stuck at home during the pandemic, everyone is now spending more of their lives online. This is how our habits have changed. About a year into the global pandemic, Google has become a new normal and obviously a necessity.
The inevitable reliance on Google during the pandemic, allowed people to be more ‘free’ than ever. The year 2020 made us realise how the new normal looks and feels. 2020 forced us all to live online. Virtually we saw our friends, many of us started working from home, spent days completing a web series on Netflix, replaced hanging out places with WhatsApp video calls.
It’s been a tradition now; every year Google shares a look at what people searched for over the year. They usually give a peek back at what people were thinking about and cared about in the preceding year. 2020 was one chaotic year with the COVID-19 pandemic, protests, US elections, Bollywood, and an endless list to go on. At the end of this memorable year, the search engine giant has analysed billions of search requests it processes every day, and has identified the terms that have had the highest spike this year compared to 2019. And guess what… “coronavirus” topped the overall list. Google has released its “Year in Search” list with 2020?s most-searched terms, breaking the results down into different categories.
Google has released its annual list of Global searches. Searches for “election results” topped the list, and searches related to “coronavirus” were ubiquitous across categories. “Kobe Bryant,” “Joe Biden” and “stimulus checks” were also widely searched terms.
Top searches:
“Coronavirus” was undoubtedly the story of the year, and people searched for various information regarding symptoms, coronavirus cases, and upcoming vaccines. COVID-19 was one of the most searched queries in 2020. After corona, US Presidential elections were on people’s minds. The US elections prompted a flood of queries related to Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris.
Apart from the major incidents that happened in 2020, Zoom became a household name. Zoom became a crucial tool this year as work, school, and social gatherings moved online. People googled everything about Zoom in order to master this new need of the hour.
With everybody working from home and diligently following the social distancing this year, people in India went crazy for IPL in 2020. IPL also secured a position in the top searches of 2020, while bread dominated the top trending recipes as people trapped indoors during lockdowns became keen amateur bakers. The Korean dalgona coffee gained immense popularity in the social media world this year.
Most searched people:
Tom Hanks and Amitabh Bachchan were among the most Googled movie stars not because of their work in 2020, but as the high-profile sufferers of the virus. Boris Johnson also secured a position among the top searches of the year because of his serious condition due to COVID-19 infection.
“Who is winning the election,” also trended this year making Joe Biden and Kamala Harris the most searched politicians in 2020. The deaths of many celebs also dove big spikes in search traffics. Fans mourned actor Chadwick Boseman, who died of cancer in August. Also, the internet went crazy on the deaths of NBA superstar Kobe Bryant, and Bollywood heartthrob Sushant Singh Rajput.
Apart from this, the death of George Floyd in May also gained a lot of attention towards the global racial discrimination. #BlackLivesMatter trended on almost every social media platform. However, while the world lost many great personalities in the year 2020, NASCAR driver Ryan Newman’s against-the-odds survival story of walking out of the hospital just days after a horrific crash during a race at Daytona, also spiked huge searches on Google.
Popular entertainment:
On the entertainment side, Netflix dominated most of the conversation. Tiger King, Cobra Kai, Money Heist, and Umbrella Academy were among the top trending searches for TV shows.
Fall Guys was a breakout success, becoming the most downloaded PlayStation Plus game of all-time when it was launched in August. But Fall Guys wasn’t the only multiplayer game that generated mass appeal. Among Us also experienced a sudden surge in popularity despite being released in 2018.