The top trending search term on Google South Africa over the 21 day lockdown period is ‘thank you coronavirus helpers’, followed by ‘lion’ and ‘Boris Johnson’.
South Africans also searched for actress Vinolia Mashego, who recently passed away, Zwelinzima Vavi, who tested positive for the COVID-19 coronavirus on 2 April, and Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, who was sanctioned and placed on leave by the President for violating the lockdown regulations.
‘Lion’ and ‘tiger’ likely refer to the hit series ’Tiger King’ and various associated parodies.
Top ten trending search terms over the 21 day lockdown period:
- Thank you coronavirus helpers
- Lion
- Boris Johnson
- Tiger
- Vinolia Mashego
- Covid-19 news
- Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams
- Money Heist
- 5G
- Zwelinzima Vavi
Search interest is plotted on an index of 0 – 100 and anything over 40 indicates high levels of search interest relative to other terms being searched at the time. Live search data is available on the Google South Africa Trends site.
Search trends information is gleaned from data collated by Google based on what South Africans have been searching for and asking Google. Google processes more than 40 000 search queries every second. This translates to more than a billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year, worldwide.