New Google data has shone a light on people’s Google searches during Boris’ premiership, revealing exactly where it all went wrong for him.
It highlights what people searched for about Boris Johnson himself, as well as the various scandals that ended his premiership.
The research was conducted by search agency Content Drive using data from Google Trends, Keyword Planner and SEO software Ahrefs to find out the most Googled queries about Boris Johnson during his time in power.
The research found some fascinating results. The second most-Googled query related to Boris Johnson was ‘How many children does Boris Johnson have?’ with an average of 9,700 searches a month.
The report also looked at some of the scandals that dogged the soon-to-be former Prime Minister.
Despite the Chris Pincher scandal ultimately being the final straw for many of his Cabinet, it seems that the public were far more outraged with the Partygate scandals and subsequent Sue Gray report into this.
This was shown by the fact that Patygate-related terms were the most searched for of all the scandals, with an average of 61,000 searches a month over the last 12 months.
Other scandals such as the Downing Street flat refurbishment, paid lobbying (Owen Patterson) and Chris Pincher drew much less attention online.
Johnson was often described as the ‘Teflon PM’ for his ability to avoid being fatally wounded by the scandals surrounding him.
Search volume data from Google Trends revealing the peaks and troughs of public interest also supports this depiction. The data shows how short the public’s attention span be meaning that our initial interest (and outrage) tends to be short-lived.
An interesting finding from the Google Trends data was that there were 23% more searches for the redacted Sue Gray report in January 2022 than for the full report in May, suggesting public interest waned and Boris Johnson did benefit politically from the various delays with the report.
The data also showed how public interest in a scandal drops over time, with searches often flatlining after an initial spike as shown with searches for ‘Downing Street Flat Refurbishment’ falling to almost zero after they peaked in November 2021 and January 2022.
