In June 2020, I explored the topic of UK Search Trends and Covid 19. Now it’s time for an update
It was the moment which many of us had anticipated, yet which none of us wanted. On 31st October 2020, a second UK lockdown was announced. During the first lockdown (announced on 24th March, 2020) we saw some really interesting trends, as the UK public scrambled for information and toilet paper
Which patterns have repeated, and how have search trends changed across the UK’s first two Covid-19 lockdowns? We’ll look at some data between 1st January 2020 and 17th November 2020 to draw some conclusions. The data will come from Google Trends
Let’s start with something simple:
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2020-01-01%202020-11-17&geo=GB&q=lockdown,covid%2019
I find the above chart really interesting. During the first lockdown, searchers in the UK were more interested in the virus itself (Covid 19). Searchers were still interested in ‘lockdown’ and what it meant for their lives, but more people were interested in the virus and how it could affect them
When the second UK lockdown was announced, this flipped drastically. People seem to feel that they are now fairly well educated on the virus and they’re not searching for it as much. Though that is true, people are now much more interested in researching lockdown measures. In part this may be down to the fact that Lockdown 2 isn’t as severe as Lockdown 1:
“unlike the restrictions in spring, schools, colleges and universities can stay open” – BBC News, source here
People will be anxiously researching the differences between the first and second lockdowns, so that they know what they can and can’t do. What this says to me is that people are still very confused about their exact freedoms and limitations during lockdown
What this says to me is that medical experts and the media have been doing a great job of spreading knowledge on the virus. By contrast, our government (and potentially again, the media) haven’t been doing such a great job of simplifying lockdown and making it easy for ‘Average Joe’ to understand
You might say that looking at individual search terms is misrepresentative. Google Trends also allows us to look at search topics:
The picture above is less obvious, but it still tells the same story. Searchers in the UK were initially more interested in Coronavirus and less interested in lockdown. That did briefly flip around, even from a topical perspective
What About the Cure?
There has been a lot of news lately about vaccines potentially reaching fruition, at some point in the near future
Two separate vaccine development companies have signalled their excitement. On 9th of November, we heard that Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine is moving closer to roll-out. A certain Chinese vaccine has also been in the press recently
Surely this information has impacted how people in the UK perform searches on Google? It has:
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2020-01-01%202020-11-17&geo=GB&q=%2Fm%2F07__7
Since mid-November, interest has sharply increased. With hopeful news, people can begin to imagine an end in sight. These were the related queries and topics, for searches processed within the “Vaccine” topic on Google:
As you can plainly see, everything seems to be Covid-19 related. People are becoming more interested in Pfizer and the possibility of a Coronavirus vaccine. The excitement is palpable
What About Material Things?
This one really interests me and also gives me hope for the human race! According to search data, between Lockdown 1 and Lockdown 2, we actually learned to put others first
Above you can see that searches for toilet paper, paracetamol and ibuprofen were really high during Lockdown 1. This was partly due to people panic buying toilet paper and paracetamol online. Mainly though the panic buying occurred in stores, forcing normal non-panic buyers to then shop online (thus inflating these searches further)
People weren’t panic buying ibuprofen, in-fact information circulated at the time suggested it could cause problems in people with Covid 19 (thus supermarket shelves were left bare of paracetamol, and over-stocked on ibuprofen). Still though; lots of people were searching for ibuprofen information
These massive panic-spikes haven’t been replicated for Lockdown 2. That gives me a lot of hope that people are spending longer checking the facts, and less time snatching bogrolls off grannies in ASDA. That’s good news
At the time of the first spike, many were left confused:
… hopefully we have now learned our collective lesson!