Relaxation, meditation dominate Google's 30-day search trends

Google search trends for the past 30 days suggest that breathing exercises, meditation and relaxing music for calming down the nerves were in great demand. Not surprising, given that the world has been under lockdown for close to two months. 

The company today released search trends for the past week which indicated that users were looking for ways to calm down, seeking relaxing chill house music and finding ways to meditate using breathing techniques. With self-care often pushed as a lasting need during the Covid-19 pandemic, these trends suggest that people are sparing no effort to find videos or apps that can give them a welcome break from stress. 

Search trends are reported using Google Trends, a tool that allows people to compare how popular a search query is over time compared with another. It provides users with insights into what people are curious about and how content generated around these topics could capture their attention and help them find solutions. 

Google's data editor Simon Rogers had explained the trends around Covid-19 in this report published by Vox. He revealed that most searches around the pandemic related to two distinct types. One revolved around big issues around the virus such as "Has a coronavirus vaccine been found" while the other around emotional issues.

What's trending?

In the latest search trends report, five key search strings came to the fore. These included relaxation, meditation, breathing exercises, inner peace, and how to organize, the last one appears to be an outcome of the time that users seem to be having as they wait out the lockdown. 

The search string around relaxation themes include users searching for "relaxing music" to a more complex "how to relax the mind from stress". The search results in India include videos related to inducing sleep, calm music and healing. They also threw up links around apps on both Playstore and App Store that claimed to induce sleep. 

Breathing exercises was another major topic that users searched for and among the top results includes a one-minute breathing exercise that Google itself provides besides similar videos created by hospitals and medical bodies. 

Another related search query involved meditation techniques which throw up strings such as "meditation techniques for anxiety", "ancient meditation techniques" and "hindu meditation techniques". The video results throw up results from various yoga institutes around the world and more specifically India. 

The search query on inner peace also includes strings such as "how to calm down" which witnessed a spike over the past month. There were also specific searches around Covid-19 that included terms like "how to stay healthy and peaceful" and "coping with the Covid pandemic". 

The 'how to organise' searches were specific to managing the home with netizens asking Google to show results on stacking up their clothes to keeping their bedrooms tidy or their study rooms clutter-free. A common search that recurred repeatedly was "how to organize apps on my phone". 

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