What Are Americans Searching During Quarantine?
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The last five months of coronavirus quarantine have been a roller coaster of emotions for us all: we’ve felt confusion, fear, panic, hope, disappointment, hunger, frustration, hunger again, and most of all, boredom. There’s no better record of that rapid series of ups and downs than our internet search history, a window into our emotional state as the pandemic began, got worse, got better for a little, then continued with still no end in sight.
When the quarantine measures were first adopted in the US back in March 2020, we looked at search traffic to Ranker (the visits that came directly from search engine results) to get a glimpse into what they were probably thinking about during the first weeks of the pandemic (turns out it was mostly toilet paper and canned soup). We’re looking back on the last few months to see just how far we’ve come — or how far we’ve sunk into cabin fever-induced madness, depending on your perspective.
April
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April saw traffic return to sort-of-normal, after late March’s surge in apocalypse-related content like Upbeat Songs About The End Of The World. Plenty of internet users were checking out lists of great pranks to pull on April 1, but this year’s shenanigans were limited to either long-distance pranks (i.e., Hilarious Text Pranks To Drive Your Friends Crazy) or more traditional pranks on the people we were quarantined with (i.e., Hilarious Pranks To Pull On Your Siblings).
Topical searches about the Kennedy Curse spiked with the tragic disappearance of Maeve Kennedy, and we saw plenty of cannabis-related traffic in celebration of 4/20. Search visits to our list of The Craziest Things That North Korean Leaders Have Claimed increased by 27% from April 20 to April 21 after rumors of Kim Jong Un’s death cropped up (and were later debunked) — then, on the 25th, it jumped up by 202% from the previous day.
The only sign of quarantine-related behavior came from a surge in searches about what TV shows and movies to watch. Traffic to our list about TV shows that fans of Ozark love saw consistently high traffic throughout the month after the show’s third season premiered on Netflix. The Best Rainy Day Movies similarly saw plenty of search traffic throughout the month.
May
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In May, signs of renewed anxiety over the pandemic began to surface. People started searching for Famous People Who Died In 2020 and Celebrity Death Pool 2020 early in the month. A few weeks in, they were looking up What Happens To Your Body During Each Of The 8 Stages Of Death.
That trend toward the morbid was interrupted, however, on May 27, when the death of George Floyd began to dominate media conversations. Ranker readers turned to lists like Ex-Cops Who Ended Up In Prison for context, which saw a search traffic increase of 28% on May 28. That number itself grew by 145% the following day. Also popular in late May was 32 Memes That Prove 2020 Is The Worst Year We've Had In A While.
June
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The month of June was dominated by interest in Floyd’s death and the protests that surrounded them. On the one hand, there are encouraging signs in this month’s traffic, like the surge in search traffic to our Best Quotes About Equality list. Perhaps more worrisome was the even larger surge in traffic to The Best All-Round Gun Brands.
A drive to celebrate and recognize the contributions of Black Americans to our society inspired plenty of interest in lists like The Best Current Black TV Shows, The Best Black Movies Ever Made, Ranked, and The Best Black Rock Bands — these lists saw increases in search traffic of 99%, 128%, and 241% from the previous day, respectively. We also saw search traffic rise for lists like Famous Black Conservatives. Finally, Pride Week led to a spike in traffic to lists like The Greatest Gay Icons In Music, Gay Wrestlers Throughout Pro Wrestling History, and The Best LGBTQ+ Movies On Amazon Prime.
But the coronavirus didn’t just drop out of the conversation. Outrageous + Unnecessary Things We Only Want To Buy Because We’re Quarantined got plenty of new views on June 18, suggesting that Americans were starting to feel a little more stir-crazy. Another potential sign of frustration with quarantine was the notable surge in interest in lists about Freemasons like Weird Rules All Freemasons Must Obey, Or Else They Face The Consequences and 8 Secret Symbols Hidden In Plain Sight In Washington, DC. It’s just a theory, but it could be that the disastrous pandemic is causing people to lose faith in institutions and seek out alternative explanations for the world around them.
July
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In July, the second wave of the coronavirus eclipsed interest in Independence Day, leading users to check out morbid articles like Inside The Secret Italian Island Where Black Plague Sufferers Were Taken To Die (growth of 115% on July 11). Famous People Who Died Of Influenza became a hot topic during this month, as did Famous People Who Died Of Aortic Aneurysm and Famous People Who Died Of Cerebral Aneurysm. Quarantining can lead to your living space getting pretty stuffy, which might explain the increase in traffic to The Best Incense For Purification. Conspiracy theorists shifted their focus from the Freemasons to the Illuminati. Our list of 2020 memes again received a significant degree of attention from users.
August
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