It has been over a year since Scotland had its first Covid-19 case, with Google showing how the UK searched for information amid the global pandemic.
While there has been misinformation spread on social media, many took to news sources for updates on the situation. Google Trends and their Coronavirus tool is now allowing us to see how trends changed over the past year.
One of the interesting aspects of the Coronavirus pandemic was the changing name of what users called the disease. Up until September 2020, Coronavirus was the main search term, however, this was soon overtaken by Covid, with the map below showing the varying search trends.
A subsequent chart from Google Trends also shows the top related queries used in the search engine, with daily deaths and Covid cases in local areas topping the search charts.
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The search engine also helps capture the mood of the nations worldwide and shows the different stages many countries are currently at.
In the past week, Germany has seen the most searches for news relating to Coronavirus, with Austria, Palestine, Switzerland and Israel making up the top 5.
Furthermore, the UK has the second most searches for lockdown with Scotland and many others in the Uk still living under restrictions.
The coronavirus search tools from Google also give the opportunity to see what the top searches have been in the UK - and indicates a spike in interest in certain topics. Indeed, according to Google’s own data. Search interest in vaccines has reached an all-time high in the UK.
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The top 5 questions around vaccinations are as follows:
1. Which vaccine did the queen have?
2 Where is the Moderna vaccine made?
3 How to cancel the covid vaccine appointment?
4 Can you drink alcohol after the covid vaccine?
5 How many people in the UK have had the covid vaccine?
The Google trends tool also gives insight into the interests over time with the preventative measures for the UK resulting in spikes in search terms.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, face masks were the most searched items with users keen to establish where they could buy facemasks and also what masks could be used.
In regards to symptoms, we can also see what users searched for and whether it was linked to Covid.
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