Argentina’s Lionel Messi with the golden ball trophy after his side won this year’s World Cup
(Picture: Reuters)The nail-biting end to the World Cup wasn’t just a milestone for winner Argentina, it was also a momentous day for Google. The tech giant drew its highest-ever search traffic in 25 years last night on December 18, according to CEO Sundar Pichai.
“It was like the entire world was searching about one thing,” Pichai tweeted in reference to the World Cup.
Google capitalised on this year’s tournament by launching a mini-game people could play on their mobile and a Google doodle featuring two animated football boots. But it was real-time match results that fans went to its search engine for, including during the six-goal thriller that brought the World Cup to a close at Qatar’s Lusail Stadium.
Search recorded its highest ever traffic in 25 years during the final of #FIFAWorldCup , it was like the entire world was searching about one thing!
— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) December 19, 2022
In the final, France fell two goals behind to Argentina, before their star player Kylian Mbappé scored twice in quick succession to take the game to extra time. Both sides then scored from penalties with Mbappé grabbing a hat trick. Argentina ultimately triumphed 4-2 on penalties to lift the World Cup for the third time in their history, their first under the stewardship of Lionel Messi. Mbappé may have received some solace by winning the Golden Boot as the tournament’s top scorer.
Google.com is already the world’s most visited website but it clearly received a boost from football’s main event as fans kept coming back to keep up with the prolific goal count. To celebrate Argentina’s victory, Google even introduced a home page that showed fireworks and the country’s flag on screen for search terms such as “Argentina vs France” and “World Cup”.
The landmark came just days after Google revealed what the world searched for this year. Naturally, the World Cup was on the list of top search terms in the UK but in second place behind Wordle (the popular word game) and ahead of Queen Elizabeth in third.
Johnny Depp and Amber Heard topped the most-searched people list: Depp came first and Heard came in third (just before Putin and after Will Smith).
