It certainly was an interesting past year, especially having just started a business – the timing was not great.

It appears that in 2020, according to Google Trends, the US Election was the most search term.

As you can see not only was the US election the most overall searched term, but interestingly in the top 5 global public figures, Tom Hanks was the only person not a politician (actually I am not sure Kim Jong Un is a politician? I guess that is questionable… perhaps dictator is a better term…)

And yes, it was not surprising to see “Toilet paper” make the “News Topics” list.

I am guessing, in part, the interest in the US election is not only due to the US being the leader of the democratic free world, but also because we have quite strong historic strategic security ties and this is becoming more of interest, due to the problematic relationship evolving between Australia and China… which I am sure is a whole blog unto itself and very political, so we will steer clear of that one … one step backwards.

When drilling into the US Election vs Coronavirus, there are a few interesting observation to make (see below).

Although the US election is the most searched (peak search) term overall, it did not have the enduring nature of the coronavirus. Subsequently when we look at the average or overall comparison breakdown by sub-region, we can see that the winner of the overall total number of searches was the Coronavirus.

So I think what Google Trends is telling us, is that the US Election had the “Max” volume over a limited period of time in terms of search (I think of this in terms of “intensity” whereas the Coronavirus had the overall “Total” volume for the entire 2020 year.

There is a little information box at the bottom of the page ad this tells us the following.

In hindsight this is no great surprise, but it does highlight how it is important to dig a little further when receiving some information!