Animated Map: What America Searched for on Google, Over the Last Decade

What America Searched for on Google, in the Last Decade

Cultural shifts come in many shapes and forms, and some are harder to measure than others.

Thankfully, Google search volume provides an easy avenue for measuring large-scale cultural trends. And because Google makes up more than 90% of all internet searches in the U.S., looking at what’s trending on Google is a great way to understand the shifting questions and interests that are captivating society at any given time.

This animated map by V1 Analytics provides an overview of the top trending Google searches in every state over the last decade. It sheds light on what types of new information, events, and stories received the most attention in the last ten years—and more generally, it shows us what the U.S. population has been thinking about.

Trending Searches versus Top Searches

Before diving into the top trends of the decade, it’s worth taking a moment to distinguish between “trending searches” and “top searches”:

• Trending Searches: Keywords that had the largest increase in traffic, in a specific period of time
• Top Searches: The most searched keywords in a given time frame

This video would look a lot different, and a lot less interesting, if it showed Google’s top searches. To give some perspective, here are the Top 10 Searches in the U.S. (as of 2020):

Rank	Keyword
#1	facebook
#2	youtube
#3	amazon
#4	gmail
#5	google
#6	weather
#7	ebay
#8	yahoo
#9	walmart
#10	yahoo mail

Understanding the difference between trending searches and top searches is important because it gives us insight into why certain keywords trend in some places, but not others. For instance, in March 2020, the word “coronavirus” was trending throughout a majority of the U.S., with a few exceptions—it wasn’t trending in Massachusetts, California, Texas, Nevada, or Arizona.

It’s easy to make the assumption that people in these states were not concerned about COVID-19—however, that’s not necessarily the case.

It’s important to remember that trending searches are measured by the increase of traffic, not just the overall amount of searches. Therefore, in states where it wasn’t trending, the word “coronavirus” may have already been a popular search term for a while, so the keyword didn’t see a sudden spike in interest like it did in other places.

Undivided Attention

In the last decade, there were moments when the entire country was googling the same thing. Some keyword trends lasted a day, while others lasted over a week.

Here’s a look at keywords that took over the whole U.S, and when they were trending unanimously:

Date Range	Category	Search Term
Feb 4, 2011	Music	Adele
Feb 6 - Feb 23, 2011	Music	Born This Way
Feb 28, 2011	Music	Born This Way
March 22 - Apr 1, 2011	Pop Culture	Rebecca Black
June 12 - June 27, 2011	TV & Film	Game of Thrones
Nov 9, 2012	Current Events	Abortion
Jan 10 - Jan 27, 2014	TV & Film	Frozen
Feb 28 - March 2, 2014	Electronics	Samsung Galaxy s5
Jan 11 - Jan 13, 2015	Music	Blank Space
Feb 26 - Mar 30, 2015	Music	Uptown Funk
June 5, 2015	Pop Culture	Caitlyn Jenner
June 16 - June 19, 2015	TV & Film	Jurassic World
Feb 26, 2016	Pop Culture	Damn Daniel
June 3, 2016	Pop Culture	Harambe
June 20, 2016	TV & Film	Finding Dory
June 30, 2016	TV & Film	Finding Dory
July 6, 2016	TV & Film	Finding Dory
Aug 4 - Aug 7, 2016	TV & Film	Suicide Squad
Aug 24 - Sept 8, 2016	Pop Culture	Harambe
Sept 23 - Sept 26, 2016	Pop Culture	Brad Pitt
Oct 21, 2016	Electronics	Google Pixel
Nov 24, 2016	Electronics	Google Pixel
Dec 14 - Dec 20, 2016	Current Events	Aleppo
Jan 7 - Jan 10, 2017	TV & Film	This Is Us
Jan 23 - Feb 2, 2017	TV & Film	This Is Us
Feb 8 - Feb 12, 2017	Sports	Super bowl
Feb 22 - Feb 24, 2017	TV & Film	This Is Us
March 7 - March 11, 2017	Electronics	Nintendo Switch
March 21 - Apr 1, 2017	TV & Film	Beauty and the Beast
May 7 - May 16, 2017	Pop Culture	Fidget Spinner
June 17 - July 18, 2017	Music	Despacito
Sept 22, 2017	TV & Film	It
Oct 13, 2017	Current Events	Harvey Weinstein
Nov 3, 2017	Current Events	Kevin Spacey
Jan 12 - Jan 23, 2018	Current Events	Logan Paul
Feb 6 - Feb 11, 2018	TV & Film	Altered Carbon
March 15 - March 29, 2018	Video Games	Fortnite
May 4, 2018	Video Games	Fortnite
July 21, 2018	Video Games	Fortnite
Aug 5 - Aug 22, 2018	Video Games	Fortnite
Jan 17 - Feb 3, 2019	Music	7 Rings
Feb 21 - Feb 23, 2019	Current Events	Jussie Smollett
March 12 - March 22, 2019	TV & Film	Captain Marvel
March 27, 2019	Music	Billie Eilish
March 30, 2019	Music	Billie Eilish
Aug 24 - Aug 27, 2019	Music	Billie Eilish
Oct 9 - Oct 29, 2019	TV & Film	Joker
Nov 20 - Nov 24, 2019	TV & Film	The Mandalorian
Dec 5 - Dec 14, 2019	Pop Culture	Baby Yoda
Jan 15, 2020	Current Events	Prince Harry
Jan 20, 2020	Current Events	Prince Harry
Feb 13 - Feb 15, 2020	TV & Film	Jojo Rabbit
May 5 - May 14, 2020	Current Events	Elon Musk
June 24, 2020	Current Events	Bubba Wallace

It’s interesting to look at the variety of topics that dominate the population’s collective thoughts. There’s a unique mix of popular culture, entertainment, electronics, prominent figures, and public scandals.

Something else worth noting is how country-wide trends became a lot more common in the latter part of the decade—in 2019 for example, 9 keywords trended unanimously. This was more than in the entire first half of the decade.

While the secret to going viral remains a mystery, one thing remains clear—the public certainly has a broad range of interests. So really, it’s anyone’s game.