Internet search habits of Australians over two decades reveal they can’t get enough COVID-19 news, rain predictions and Tomahawk steak cooking instructions.

Google has released some remarkable search engine trends since it entered the Australian market 20 years ago.

Australians have googled ‘Covid news’ more than any other news topic in the last 20 years, closely followed by ‘Trump news’.

In January 2020, searches for ‘bushfires’ and ‘air quality’ reached record, all time highs.

Overall, ‘bushfire’ and ‘flood’ dominated natural disaster searches in the last two decades.

This year’s rainfall across the east coast resulted in the second highest spike in interest for floods in Google history – after the 2011 Queensland floods.

And with another year of La Nina bringing summer rain, more people searched ‘when will the rain stop’ in March 2022 than ever before.

‘Time travel’ was the most googled type of travel, followed by ‘international travel’ and ‘student travel’.

Australia was also the most charitable country, with the most searches for op shops in the world.

 

Neve Brissenden
(Australian Associated Press)