- What We Ask Google by Simon Rogers (Torva £16.99, 288pp) is available now from the Mail Bookshop
Did you know that ‘1437’ is text slang for ‘I love you forever’, because of the number of letters in each word?
Or that Russians are the only people in the world who dream about picking mushrooms? Or that it’s illegal to call a child Lucifer in New Zealand? Google does.
The company’s data editor, Simon Rogers, has written this revealing book about our interactions with the search engine – what we ask it, what it tells us and what that reveals about the modern world.
Rogers says his job makes him feel ‘like an archaeologist, uncovering unknown truths about who we are’. The Russians and their mushrooms are a surprise.
Searches in other languages for dream-meanings are what you’d expect – camels are only searched for by Arabic speakers and it is just the Portuguese who look into garlic.
That said, Rogers doesn’t know why the Russians dream of mushrooms. My guess would be that lots of them see the countryside as a symbol of escape and reconnection with the natural world. Why do I say that? Because I just Googled it.
Pick a side: ‘Should I get a dog?’ is searched more than twice as often as ‘should I have kids?’
Some searches are seasonal. ‘Why am I so tired?’ spikes every March when the clocks go forward (except in Thailand, where they don’t).
It’s also spiking more and more in June and July, possibly due to temperatures rising over the past two decades.
‘Comfort food’ spikes in October, while ‘how to play piano’ has its moment in December.
These all make sense – but why does ‘who invented peanut butter’ spike every February? Rogers has no idea. Should you be wondering who did, the first patent was filed by John Harvey Kellogg, he of the cereals.
Love, unsurprisingly, is an ever-present. ‘How to ask a girl out’ lives near the top of the charts, as does the more philosophical ‘what is love?’
Lots of people wonder whether if someone at a wedding answers ‘yes’ to the ‘does anyone here know of any impediment . . .’ question, the ceremony actually stops.(Answer: no, unless it’s a legally valid reason. ‘Because I still love her’ doesn’t count.)
Other hardy perennials include health (one in 20 of all searches) and pets. ‘Should I get a dog?’ is searched twice as often as ‘should I have kids?’
The world is constantly changing, hence 15 per cent of daily queries being ones that have never occurred before.
In a time when the news is so relentlessly gloomy, this book provides a ray of hope.
Rogers finds his job inspiring, as it reassures him that most people are good people, wanting to do the best for themselves, their family and friends.
Yes, there is a lot of unhappiness around – but there are a lot of people fighting against it. And not just on their own account: ‘How to help someone with depression’ is always near the top of the ‘most-searched questions’ chart.
And we’re finding endless new ways of having fun. ‘How to make slime’ peaked between 2016 and 2019 – closely followed by ‘how to get slime out of carpet’.
