Sign up for our daily briefing
Make your busy days simpler with Axios AM/PM. Catch up on what's new and why it matters in just 5 minutes.
Catch up on the day's biggest business stories
Subscribe to Axios Closer for insights into the day’s business news and trends and why they matter
Stay on top of the latest market trends
Subscribe to Axios Markets for the latest market trends and economic insights. Sign up for free.
Sports news worthy of your time
Binge on the stats and stories that drive the sports world with Axios Sports. Sign up for free.
Tech news worthy of your time
Get our smart take on technology from the Valley and D.C. with Axios Login. Sign up for free.
Get the inside stories
Get an insider's guide to the new White House with Axios Sneak Peek. Sign up for free.
Catch up on coronavirus stories and special reports, curated by Mike Allen everyday
Catch up on coronavirus stories and special reports, curated by Mike Allen everyday
Want a daily digest of the top Denver news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Denver
Want a daily digest of the top Des Moines news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Des Moines
Want a daily digest of the top Twin Cities news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Twin Cities
Want a daily digest of the top Tampa Bay news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Tampa Bay
Want a daily digest of the top Charlotte news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Charlotte
Sign up for Axios NW Arkansas
Stay up-to-date on the most important and interesting stories affecting NW Arkansas, authored by local reporters
If you're feeling extra tired this holiday season, blame the non-stop news cycle of 2020, as visualized in Axios' fourth annual Google Trends chart.
Why it matters: From a pandemic to multi-city protests to contested elections, 2020 has been one unprecedented crisis after another. "We have never seen a year like this in Google Trends history," Simon Rogers, a Google data editor, told Axios."These were huge stories that changed how we search."
- Because of the overwhelming volume of search interest in the broad topics of "coronavirus" and "elections," Axios left those terms out of our list.
- We opted instead to include more specific, related topics like "masks," "Anthony Fauci," "absentee ballots" and "Joe Biden."
Between the lines: The chart again reveals how short Americans' attention span can be, with surges in Google searches often lasting only a week for a given topic.
- You can see this with 2020 topics like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tearing up President Trump's State of the Union speech, Kobe Bryant's death and the Beirut explosion.
- But several big topics saw multiple weeks of increased interest this year, such as masks, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's exit from the royal family, the QAnon conspiracy theory, the record-breaking use of absentee ballots because of the pandemic, and the various investigations and conspiracy theories involving Hunter Biden.
By the numbers: Excluding "coronavirus" and "'elections," Kobe Bryant's death generated the largest spike in searches of any other single event.
- But overall Google interest in "coronavirus" over the year overshadowed Kobe Bryant by more than 10 times, according to Google Trends data.
- You can see COVID-19's impact on Americans' lives in a wide variety of Google search trends. Searches about unemployment, hunger and food banks were higher than ever before, Rogers said.
- Even so, the spike in searches for "elections" around Nov. 3 was even higher than any single spike of interest in coronavirus, although interest in the virus remained high for longer.