Weather dominates as Google reveals Ireland's top searches over 20 years
James Cox
Google is marking 20 years in Ireland by releasing a list of the country's top searches over the past two decades, with weather unsurprisingly dominating the list.
In 2003, the Spire finally get completed on O’Connell Street, the Special Olympics took place in Ireland and Google opened their first office in Dublin with just five employees.
Sadly this summer has been dominated by bad weather, with the wettest July on record from Met Éireann.
However, 2018 searches were focused on the heatwave people enjoyed that summer.
The top five searches were:
- How long will the heatwave last?
- When will the heatwave end?
- Heatwave memes
- Met Eireann heatwave
- Dublin heatwave
In 2011 there were widespread floods, with Dundrum Town Centre submerged, these were the top searches that year.
- Dublin floods
- Dundrum flooding
- Meath flooding
- Monaghan floods
- Galway City flood
Since 2015, storms have been named and the likes of Storm Ophelia, Storm Lorenzo and Storm Callum featured heavily in Google searches.
Sport is also a popular topic, with Ireland searching for the Olympics in 2012 more than any other year. 'When is Katie Taylor fighting in the Olympics' was the top trending question.
After Ireland's historic Grand Slam success in 2009, 'grand slam' was the leading search topic in March.
Looking back at the trending ‘How To’ and ‘What is’ questions since 2003 gives an insight into "what the nation was searching for answers for over the last 20 years".
Ireland’s love for pancakes is in no doubt as ‘How to make pancakes’ regularly tops the trending searches. In 2014 ‘How to make loom bands’’ was the most searched question while in 2015 people turned to Google to find out ‘How to use new Snapchat’.
The most searched ‘What is’ terms brings us back to some recent referenda, in 2008 ‘What is the Lisbon Treaty’ was the most searched 'what is’ question and ten years later in 2018 it was ‘What is blasphemy’.
Some of the past 20 years' searches for ‘definition’ give an insight to the cultural moments of the time. In 2013 ‘twerk ’topped the list, ‘despacito’ was the most searched in 2017 and in 2019, the year impeachment proceedings began for Donald Trump ‘impeachment’ was the most searched definition term in Ireland.
