Google Monthly Trends for April 2023 with Sarah Armstrong, VP, Global Marketing Operations - Google

The transcript is a conversation between Burt Barron and Sarah Armstrong, a Google technology expert, discussing the top search trends in various categories for the month of April. They cover entertainment, culture, science, odd news, sports, and food. Some notable trends include the popularity of the Barbie movie, interest in Coachella and music performers, searches related to religious holidays, Earth Day and sustainability, nail art, college basketball, and Easter recipes. The conversation ends with Burt joking about his success in guessing the top trends. It is the end of the month of April already. Another month has kind of come and gone. And typically toward the end of the month we take a look back to see what were the most search terms regarding Google. What were you and I here in New Jersey, what were we looking up the most using Google in a bunch of different categories? And I get together with one of the top people from Google each month and we take a look back to see what was on our minds. What were we looking up for the month of April? And my guest this morning here at the RNJ Morning Program, just to see how closely I've been paying attention, is Sarah Armstrong. She is a Google technology expert and we're going to review the month of April. Sarah, good morning. It's Burt Barron, RNJ Radio here in New Jersey. How are you? Good morning. Thanks for having me, Burt. I'm doing well. Welcome back and here we go. Let's jump in with a couple of categories that we have for April, for the month of April for Google. First category that we have is entertainment. And there was a bunch of different things, you know, I tried to think was there an awards ceremony in April. I couldn't remember there being one. I know Morgan Wallen stormed off or canceled a concert like abruptly recently, but that might have been too close to our date to be able to go to one of the top search trends. So I typically go to my fallback of movies and this Super Mario movie, which is just blowing up at the box office. I'm going to Google that that was the top search term. Would I be close for April for that one, the Super Mario movie? I wouldn't say top search overall in April, but we definitely saw a big spike in Super Mario movie searches and I saw it all over social media. People are very excited about that. But it wasn't number one. You know, one of the movies that we saw so much interest in this month is actually the Barbie movie. It's directed by Greta Gerwig, who did Lady Bird and Little Women. That went viral on social media probably because there's so many big celebrities in it and people aren't quite sure what the plot is going to be. So it generated a lot of excitement. And this is just the trailer and people are this excited about it. It's only a trailer at this point. Right. The trailer dropped this month and it kept sort of an air of mystery while showing off how stacked that cast is. Okay. People were very excited about it. And then we saw searches around Barbie doll in general, which is pretty funny. Gotcha. Okay. Anything else for the entertainment searches? Maybe something from the music world coming up? Yeah. Coachella was this month and we saw a lot of interest there. You talked about canceled performances with Morgan Wall and Frank Ocean. He struggled in his first weekend at Coachella and then he actually dropped out of the second weekend. So he was the top search performer there. He's followed by Bad Bunny, who always sees a lot of search interest. So it was for Frank Ocean. One of the reviewers said it was the worst concert in the history of concerts, the show that he did do while he was there. But surprisingly, Coachella, you know, a couple highlights, you know, they always bring in, how should I word this, an established veteran act. They brought Blondie in this year and people just were falling in love with Blondie and Blondie's music again. And I think the Blink 182 reunion got a lot of exposure as well from Coachella. So, all right, the Barbie movie and Coachella, they've led the way for entertainment. Culture, you know, I try to think about we had the Easter holiday earlier this month. And it was one of those weird things on the calendar, Sarah, where we had Easter, Ramadan, and the other holiday of Passover, all coinciding for the first time in like 30 years. Were people looking up as to maybe why that happened this year for the first time? Right. So we had so many religious holidays this month, lots of search interest there. And we did have searches about, you know, why is Easter on this day? Why is Eid on this day? Lots of questions around that. But yeah, they definitely coincided. So we saw searches like, what do you say for Passover? And chocolate bunny searches. We're actually at an all-time high this year because it's Easter. So it's kind of fun to see what's on folks' minds there. All right. There's one for me. So I'm one for two so far. Next category is science. And it's got to be one of two things, Sarah. It's either Earth Day or it's Elon Musk's rocket blowing up. It's got to be one of those two, I think, in the science category. Right. We have Earth Day trends for that, although Elon Musk is always quite popular in search as well. Folks were searching for climate and sustainability at an all-time high this year. We went ahead and looked at recycling trends. That's always a popular one. I thought it was interesting to see mattress recycling trending. I don't always think about that for recycling. A lot of electronic searches, so how to recycle TVs, computers, and then, of course, things like cans and batteries. Mattress recycling, that's a thing. I'll have to take a look at that now. Maybe that'll be a top search for May if I look at it enough, right? Sarah Armstrong is my guest this morning here at the RNJ Boarding Program. She is a Google technology expert, and we're taking a look back at what were the top searches for the month of April. I think I got one and a half so far of the three. But we'll move on to the next category. Sarah, this is the one I always struggle with, with odd news, because so many things to me are just kind of odd and bizarre news. Would the rocket explosion fall into the odd news category, or maybe did something else set the pace there for April? I would consider the rocket explosion odd news, probably somewhere between odd news and science. I know that it was a test run, so hopefully folks weren't too shocked there. Something that you might not have expected with odd news is we're seeing nail art trending, so folks are getting really creative with how they're doing their nails. This is actually a type of YouTube video that we're seeing really take off. So we saw trends like nail design, flower nail art, and ways folks are just getting really creative with their nails. I'm not super into nail art, but lots of people seem to be. It seems like a very recession-proof thing, you know, no matter what our economy is like, there's always money to get the nails taken care of. I wonder if the next step, I wonder if it's the nail NFT. I wonder if that's the next thing that we'll see. Are we on to something with that, Sarah? Totally. What do you think? We're going to further commodify nail art, and people do their nails around cultural moments like the World Cup and other things like that, so it's pretty funny to see. Gotcha, okay, all right. So I missed that one. Sports, you would think this would be my wheelhouse. Now we're looking at April. The biggest, maybe the sporting event of the entire year next to the Super Bowl has to be the basketball tournament. I know we had the championship games for both the men and the women. They were both played in April. It's kind of a quiet month for the NFL. I know they have their draft tonight. NBA playoffs have been going on. My Knicks are on to the next round, but it's got to be the college basketball. I would think that would be the top trendsetter for April. Do they kind of own the day for April? Yeah, you know, we saw them mostly spiking in March, but you're absolutely right. We saw a lot of search interest for college basketball. NBA playoffs, that's starting to rise in search interest, especially the scoring record from the Warriors. So we saw searches like most points in an NBA playoff game, that was spiking. And then in sports, golf masters was also really popular. I don't personally follow golf so closely, but it looks like a lot of people do. We saw searches like masters payout, masters leaderboard spiking as well. Oh, okay. Golf, maybe the best thing about golf on TV is a high-definition television, Sarah, which you probably have. That is the best sport, I think, to watch in high definition with the different greens and that part of the golf course there in Georgia with the nice, bright, colorful flowers. I could even tell you who won, but it was just fun to watch some of the golf there from this year. All right, so I guess college basketball, so I missed that one too. Food is always one that I struggle with as well for our last one. I don't know. How about Easter egg recipes or Easter dining ideas? Was that moving things for food for April? You're definitely right. Like I said, chocolate bunnies hit an all-time high. Easter recipe is always popular in April. We always see that spiking, and this year's no exception. Something that I love about April is it's National Burrito Day, so lots of burrito searches. We looked at Google Maps data to see what burrito places are most popular in your area. Vita Verde is very popular, but yeah, lots of interest in burritos. So we had National Burrito Day. Does that pave the way for Cinco de Mayo, which is coming up a week from tomorrow? I guess so, right? Oh, that could make sense. Could be the opening act. Sort of pre-gaming, getting ready for Cinco de Mayo. Exactly, the opening act for Cinco de Mayo, so I'll give myself two and a half out of six. Not so bad there, but we'll try again when we get to the month of May and see if I'm paying any closer attention. Sarah Armstrong, Google technology expert, always fun to go over and review the list with you and your fellow techies there from Google. Thanks for the time today. Have a wonderful day, and we'll talk in about a month. Great, thank you, Bert.