Google's top Christmas searches
December 25, 2018
You'd think Christmas Day would be the one day of the year that people would prefer to eat at home. But according to Google Trends, Americans have been searching for mostly fast-food restaurant chains that are still open over the holidays more than anything else.
The number one ranked search term — more than half a million times — asked if Denny's or IHOP (a nationwide pancake diner) were open, closely followed by queries for the opening times of McDonalds, Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts — each with more than 200,000 searches.
If you include searches made on Christmas Eve too, more than 1.15 million searches were for restaurants open on the first day of the holidays.
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Recession fears
Holiday recipes and holiday movies were also among the top American search terms, while the Washington Post on Monday reported that the number of searches for the word "recession" had reached its highest since 2009.
Compare that to Germany, where the largest number of searches on Christmas Day was for the American horror film Conjuring 2, which got its network television premiere a day earlier.
On Christmas Eve, close to quarter of a million Germans searched for details of Heidi Klum's new fiance. The German supermodel announced on Monday she would marry her musician boyfriend, Tom Kaulitz, who she's been dating for almost a year.
Over the previous 24 hours, some 200,000 Germans had wanted to know about store opening times — as many supermarkets and other shops closed as early at 2 p.m local time (1300 UTC) on Monday. Another popular term was for "Tankstelle" (gas or petrol station).
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India, meanwhile, spent Christmas Eve searching for seasonal images, quotes, and stories, but on Christmas Day itself, more than 100,000 requests were made for Bogibeel Bridge, a combined rail and road bridge in the northeastern state of Assam that was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Meteorite rumors abound
As well as Christmas, Russians were interested in claims that a huge landslide in the remote Khaborovsk region may have been caused by a meteorite. But by Christmas Day, their new focus was Miley Cyrus tying the knot with Australian actor Liam Hemsworth, whose name in the Cyrillic script is written Лиам Хемсворт.
Top Christmas Day searches by Brits included whether McDonalds was open and how to make roast potatoes, On Christmas Eve, meanwhile, more than half a million searches asked: "Where's Santa?"