I mean, New Zealand is pretty great!
An amusing Google trend came about last night, as the two US presidential candidates went toe-to-toe for the first time. As Donald Trump and Joe Biden took to the floor, watched by the nation, New Zealand started popping up online. [Featured image: Casey Horner, Unsplash].
That’s because as the candidates debated, US viewers were so horrified that they begun to search about moving to New Zealand.
Just 20-minutes into the debate, after Trump had blamed Covid-19 on China and Biden had told him to “just shut up”, Google trends recorded a sharp increase in the search “how to move to New Zealand”. Hey, that is one way to get as far away from that shambles as possible, I guess!
Google Trends ranks the popularity of searches on a scale of 0-100. 20-minutes in, the search climbed from zero to 23. After one-hour, it had climbed to 75. And, half an hour later, the scale had reached the glorious 100. Good to know we are the go-to spot, eh? I mean, how would we not be? Just look at the main image to this very article!
According to Google’s data, the search was most popular in the state of Oregon, followed by Washington, Nevada and Utah. On top of that search, other options, such as “can I move to New Zealand?” and “move to New Zealand from US” gained traction.
So, it seems like we must be doing something right over here. As for the presidential debate? We couldn’t possibly comment…