It seems like yesterday, but the truth is this Today is 20 years since the official arrival of Google in Spain or, which is the same, since the founding of Google Spain, with the launch of the company’s first office in our country. I specify the official arrival, because of course it was already possible to use her services before, but her presence marked us before and after, which of course translated into a better adaptation of the company’s products and services to our market.

During these 20 years, Google has become an exceptional witness to how the interests of the Spanish have developed, which provides a very interesting map of the human and the divine in relation to our society. From the prevalence of Shakira as a recurring interest (in 2003 with La Tortura, in 2023 for her collaboration with Bizarrap) to the growing interest in mainstream issues such as mental health, climate change and diversity among others.

These developments in search trends, added to the occasional spikes, mean that, given Google’s enormous reach, slightly less than chronology both the aforementioned developments and the events and circumstances that temporarily disturbed practically the entire population at a given moment. An example of that? We need to go to Google Trends and search the search history since 2004 related to the risk premium. This is the result:

July 2012 saw a peak in Google searches related to the risk premium, and given the interest it generated, you’d think that was probably a record amount of interest in that particular search, right? Leaving this economic indicator aside, but also going back to the search I mentioned earlier, the search for Shakira, let’s see what happens when we compare the two:

Interesting, isn’t it? Well, let’s look at one more comparison, or to be more precise, let’s add one more trend to this comparison. At the end of 2022 and so far in 2023, we have seen an explosion of interest in artificial intelligence. So will we see interest in this tech industry eclipse the Barranquilla star?

Well, it seems not, although artificial intelligence is currently on everyone’s lips, Shakira’s sustain is proving to be an example of great interest over time.

So does that mean there are no trends, no matter how big, that can overcome this? Not at all. In fact, let’s see what happens when we add a search that became very relevant last year:

A very interesting aspect of this last graph is that it shows a very interesting development, and that is the number of searches that are currently being done on hot topics compared to using Google ten years ago. At the time, the risk premium kept virtually everyone uncertain, and although the war in Ukraine is also a very current topic, it most likely did not worry us to the level that the economic indicator did ten years ago.

Finally, to add a bit more dimension to the graph, we’ll add another lookup that will persist over time:

And also with a recurring seasonal search (in this case I excluded Madrid, because Trends allows you to compare a maximum of five searches):

Interesting, isn’t it? As I said before, it would be possible to find out a lot about our company based on the searches we do on Google every day. If you want to check it yourself, you can do so using some points that Google makes on its official blog in Spain:

«The lists of the most searched terms on Google have reflected the rise of social networks such as Tuenti or Facebook over the past 20 years; events that have marked current events, such as the anti-tobacco law, the vote of no confidence or the coronavirus, and other elements that are already part of our popular culture, such as Operación Triunfo, Ecce Homo or Despacito.«