Every keyword query has a search intent behind it. This is why someone typed a string of keywords into the search box. This analysis is from Semrush. It shows how people’s relationships with the pandemic have changed over time. You can find more information about SEO trends and traffic benchmarks. Get the Semrush State of Search2022 ebook now.
The rise and fall of keywords are like a mood ring that reflects the world’s feelings about the pandemic. People searched less for COVID testing as they sought inoculation. The search intent changed from being offensive to defensive.
Restaurants closed, and people became more isolated, so food delivery services soared (unsurprisingly, not for Domino’s pizza). People shifted from restriction mode to cocktail-on-the-beach mode as travel restrictions eased.
Keyword trends reveal the inner workings behind pandemic mindsets. Google was the anonymous helpline for COVID concerns, hopes and life planning.
The pandemic also created a new language: it changed how we talk. A variety of search terms were created. As people sought to understand their health status, “PCR” was a common search term.
The COVID search trends also showed who we (well, Google) trust. Local authorities were given more weight than national ones on the search engine results page for “coronavirus”. It preferred data from privately-owned companies over John Hopkins University.
Semrush analyzed search, keyword and organic traffic data for 18 months (March 2020-August 2021) to determine how online user behavior changed through the lens of COVID. Let’s talk differently.
These terms weren’t relevant at the beginning of the data period (March 2020) because there wasn’t a vaccine. This means that the average value of some keywords is much higher than what you see.
Here is a breakdown of the most used terminology within the keyword set.
Keyword changes over time
We tracked changes in attitudes towards pandemics from June to August 2021 to capture changing attitudes. We were particularly interested to see how the vaccination roll-out affected what people searched on Google.
Here’s what the 47 COVID-related keyword terms that experienced a 40% decrease in usage over the specified timeframe had in common.
Eight keywords, such as “covid relief bill” or similar, are related to the COVID stimulus. This trend of decreasing searches is understandable, as there have been no signs of another stimulus in the
Eighteen keywords, such as “covid 19 Indian” and “covid colorado”, directly refer to or imply the need to understand the number of cases in a particular location. Despite surges in interest, the people became less interested in the “numbers” as the pandemic dragged on.
Nine keywords, such as “nose burning coronavirus” and “is coronavirus screening free”, refer to symptoms or testing related to COVID. This could indicate that people are familiar with the procedures for diagnosing and testing COVID infections.
If you only look at the top 20 most popular URLs, you will see that 14 of those domains are government-run sites. Surprisingly, 9 of the 14 sites are not national but local government sites. Of those 9, one is a hyper-local domain–lacountry.gov (if you include dc.gov, you could argue that 2 out of 9 are hyper-local domains).
Google chose to have less coverage in the US and more coverage locally for “coronavirus”, a vital keyword. It begs the question: Why was one state’s government ranked higher than another? New York, for example, which was one of the most severely affected states, wasn’t among the top 20 domains.
Sites run by the state were also more popular than sites managed by the FDA or NIH.
Notable is also the trust Google placed in worldometers.info, a privately owned website, which Dadax, LLC, owns. Google preferred Worldometers.info over data from Johns Hopkins University, the only.edu listed on this list.
The results are quite clear when you look at the domains with the highest-ranking domains.
The CDC’s coronavirus.gov site was ranked 8th overall, not 16. The ArcGIS data dashboard powered by Johns Hopkins ranks among the top 20, along with Wikipedia and the more familiar Washington Post.
