Across the pond in the UK, the EU Referendum has delivered a vote for “Brexit” as the Leave campaign won with 52% of the vote, leaving Remain with less than half at 48%, with 72% turnout. It’s a result that has plunged the pound to its lowest figures since the 1980’s, and it’s more recently had an effect on the NASDAQ this morning, too. What is interesting about the vote in the UK is the trends that Google had recorded just after polls closed on June 23rd. Google Trends, the part of Google that reports spikes and well, trends, in the billions of searches Google handles every day shed some light on confusion and perhaps panic following the Brexit result.
In a series of Tweets today, the Google Trends Twitter account had some interesting figures and insights to share with people. Unsurprisingly, the question of “are we in or out of the EU?” spiked a whopping 2,450% over previous searches. There were more nuanced questions however, with the search for “Irish passport” seeing a spike of 100%, this is probably down to the fact that if UK citizens have some sort of Irish heritage, they can declare dual-citizenship, which would of course given them an EU-approved passport to help Brits their freedom of movement privileges exactly the same as they have been for decades. A search for “buy gold” spiked a sizeable 500%, which could refer to those looking to sell some jewelry in order to get some quick cash, which would be ill-advised given the state of the markets right now.
Questions by region might tickle some readers, with the search of “move to Gibraltar” spiking 680% in London, while the top question is Birmingham was “what is Brexit?” and a worrying fourth spot for “what is the EU Referendum?”. All of the insights and trends recorded are available at the Google Trends Twitter account, with some images of the highlights linked in the below gallery. If nothing else, this is an interesting look into the questions being asked by the majority of people, and many of them aren’t all that surprising. As the Brexit saga unfolds, it will be interesting to see if Google Trends release any more interesting facts as the UK and Europe learn more about their collective future.
