We’ve finally passed the halfway mark of 2020, the year that has felt like it’s somehow compressed about a decade into six months. Not too sure how time works at this point but I feel like I’ve aged a lot since January. A lot’s happened in that time too so I’ll forgive you for needing to look everything up, but Google has been keeping tabs on our searches and just dropped the top things we’ve been googling over the top end of the year.
Probably doesn’t need much more introduction but mates, it’s pretty grim.
The start of the year already broke a Google search record in Australia, with “bushfires” reaching its highest peak on record. It was quickly beaten out by everyone looking up about coronavirus though because that’s the most-searched term between January and June. And that alone was four times bigger than how much we were searching about bushfires back in Jan. Woof.
A lot of the top 20 Google searches include things about the coronavirus pandemic, including “social distancing”, “panic buying” and “toilet paper”, but there’s also stuff in there that go hand in hand with spending a lot of time inside. Like how Tiger King and Animal Crossing literally dropped on the same day four months ago.
The most grim thing searched for in the last six months though has been “furlough”, which is just so upsetting. That single word holds so much despair and definitely encapsulates a lot of what Aussies are experiencing this year.
Check out the top 20 topics from the first half of 2020, the total asterisk of a year.
- Coronavirus
- Social Distancing
- Worldometers
- Panic buying
- Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)
- Black Lives Matter
- Pandemic
- Hand sanitiser
- Animal Crossing
- Spanish flu
- Kobe Bryant
- Zoom Video Communications
- Social Isolation
- Quarantine
- Toilet paper
- Furlough
- TikTok
- Bushfires in Australia
- Epidemic
- Stockpile
In less-upsetting stuff, some of the actual questions that we’ve punched into Google have definitely made me giggle. Searches like “Is Kim Jong Un dead?” (remember when everyone thought he’d carked it?) and “What is the name of Kingdom in Tangled?” (seriously, how many of you were looking this up? It’s Corona…oh) fill the top 20 list of questions.
Also, a lot of people wanted to know what “simp” means, which is a deeply simp thing to do.
Of course, there’s a lot of questions in there about coronavirus, like “Can you get coronavirus twice?” and “Can dogs get coronavirus?”, but apparently you also wanted to know how old Addison Rae is, and when exactly Minecraft was shutting down.
Check ’em out, these are golden questions.
- How many cases of coronavirus in Australia?
- What is coronavirus?
- How did coronavirus start?
- How many people have died from coronavirus?
- What are the symptoms of coronavirus?
- What does simp mean?
- When will coronavirus end?
- How long does coronavirus last on surfaces?
- Can you get coronavirus twice?
- Is coronavirus airborne?
- How old is Addison Rae?
- How to make hand sanitiser.
- Is Kim Jong Un dead?
- When is minecraft shutting down?
- Where to buy toilet paper.
- How is coronavirus spread?
- What is the name of the kingdom in Tangled?
- Can dogs get coronavirus?
- Why is everyone buying toilet paper?
- When does jobkeeper end?
Here’s hoping the next six months of innocent Google searches are less grim, and more Dean Norris energy.
Sex gifs
— Dean Norris (@deanjnorris) May 23, 2018
