The final report on rank charts analysis addresses the queries related to “At home” term, which received increased attention during the lockdown, as one may expect and as the plots below confirm.
Due to the movement restriction, a relevant problem was to keep oneself fit and physically active. This is reflected, in every country analysed, by an increased interest in queries about “Workout at home” and similar (“Ginnastica” and “Allenamento” in Italy, “Sport” in France, “Gimnasia” in Spain). Also, terms “Esercizi” (Italy) and “Ejercicios” (Spain) are probably searches about “Physical exercises”, but we cannot exclude that these may refer to “Scholastic exercises” (i.e. homeworks), although less likely.
Another consequence of the lockdown was the closure of schools and a quick set up of remote teaching “At home”. As remarked above, “Esercizi” (Italy) and “Ejercicios” (Spain) may represent queries on this topic, together with “Learning” (Australia), “Scholastic learn” (US) “Rte school” (Ireland). Notably, France expressed much interest in schooling, as we find many queries (for example “Ecole”, “Classe”, “Cned”) that occupy most of its rank chart.
Related to a sudden availability of free time to spend “At home”, we find queries such as “Do things” (UK and Australia), or their equivalent “Que hacer” (Spain) and “Cosa fare” (Italy).
The closure of barber shops and hair saloons may have impacted the population with shorter hair styles, males in particular. This hypothesis may explain the searches on “Cut hair” (UK) and those targeting men’s haircut in particular, such as “Tagliare i capelli uomo” (Italy) and “Cortar pelo hombre” (Spain).
The first phase of the COVID-19 emergency was characterised by many communication campaigns on the respect of lockdown’s restrictions. Thus, in the rank charts we find the catchphrases “Stay at home” (Ireland, UK, US, Australia), “Io resto a casa” (Italy), “Restez chez vous” (France), “Yo me quedo en casa” (Spain), “Wir bleiben zuhause” (Germany). Rendering the same message, but more emphatically, we also find “Bitte bleibt zuhause!” (Germany), plus the viral songs “Stay the fuck at home” (UK, Australia, US) and “Quedate en tu puta casa” (Spain). Much searched in the English speaking countries is “One World: Together At Home” (or part of these words), a series of virtual concerts curated by singer Lady Gaga, among others.
A radical change of the US’s related queries occurred in mid March, when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation: most of the top searches before this week (for example “Jobs”, “Near me”, “Store”) are replaced by “At home order” terms from each state.
The UK’s rank chart is dominated by queries about “Body shop”, supposedly the retail company, and “Pets”, probably for the pet supplier retailer, vets, or the actual animals. A similar highly ranked query about pets in Germany (“Suchen tiere”), is likely to refer to a tv series “Tiere suchen ein Zuhause”, instead.
In Italy, the top searched query every week is “Esselunga”, a supermarket chain. During the lockdown period, we observe an increase in supermarket searches (“Carrefour”, “Coop”) for groceries delivery (“Spesa a casa”, “Consegna a casa”).