European football thrashing, pandemic advice, and footwear options for convicted criminals were some of the top Google searches across Nigeria in August.
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Taiwo Kola-Ogunlade, Communication Officer, Google West Africa, said in a statement on Wednesday that Bayern Munich’s 8-2 thrashing of Barcelona in the UEFA Champions League on August 14 topped the search on Google.
Kola-Ogunlade said that Estádio da Luz might have been empty for Bayern Munich Vs Barcelona in the UEFA Champions League but that did not mean there was any less attention paid to it online.
Açcording to him, in fact, the fixture was the top search in Nigeria over the past month.
’’Small wonder the match was extraordinary and saw several records being broken.
‘’For instance, Bayern beat their own record of 36 minutes set against Porto in the 2014/15 quarter-final second leg, for the fastest a team has ever scored four goals in a Champions League knockout match.
‘’It was also the first time Barcelona had conceded more than five goals in a Champions League knockout game since 1976,’’ he said.
Kola-Ogunlade said the reason the stadium had no spectators was to limit the spread of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic which also remained top of mind too.
According to him, COVID-19 prevention was the second-most searched term for the month.
He said that to date, there have been more than 54,000 confirmed cases in Nigeria, with just over 1 000 confirmed deaths.
The communication officer said most esoteric among the top searches for August was undoubtedly “prison slippers”.
He said that the search trended after Nigerians were called out for paying more than N21,000 for Yeezy Slides, the slippers created by Rap Mogul, Kanye West.
Kola-Ogunlade said it didn’t take long, however, for local bloggers to realise that they look remarkably similar to prison slippers.
He said another notable trending topic included “WAEC 2020 timetable”.
This year’s timetable for the important secondary school certificate exams courted controversy, with a number of examinations clashing with Friday Jumu’ah prayers, leading to claims that it was anti-Muslim.
Other trending terms included, “Buruji Kashamu”, (following the politician’s death on August 8), various football fixtures, and “Burna Boy twice as tall.”
He said when it came to the top questions for the month, financial affairs won out, with “how to make money online” the top search.
According to him, it was followed by “when is school returning.”
“When is school resuming in Nigeria” and in fifth, suggesting that there may be some frustrated parents out there.
Kola-Ogunlade said that Baking remains a trend, with “how to make pancakes” and “how to make a cake” among the most asked questions.
He said that at a deeper level, “who is the world best man” was an interesting feature among the most asked questions for the month.
Search trends information is gleaned from data collated by Google based on what Nigerians have been searching for and asking Google.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that Google processed more than 40,000 search queries every second, this translated to more than a billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year, worldwide.
Google’s mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
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