Revealed: What Irish people have Googled more than anything else in last 20 years

If the search engine giant learned one thing about the Irish, it’s that we really are weather obsessed.

During the last two decades, those in Carrick-on-Shannon in Leitrim, have searched the weather more than anywhere else, followed by Tramore in Co Waterford and New Ross in Co Wexford.

The last time people searched repeatedly for the phrase ‘heatwave’ was in 2018, when this term was trending.

The top search was: ‘How long will the heatwave last?’, followed by ‘When will the heatwave end?’, ‘heatwave memes’, ‘Met Éireann heatwave’ and ‘Dublin heatwave’.

In 2015 Ireland said farewell to boring, nameless storms, as Met Éireann and the UK Met office launched the "Name Our Storms" campaign.

Since then, Storm Ophelia – the worst storm Ireland had seen in 50 years – has been searched most often, followed by Storm Lorenzo and Storm Callum.

And Google searches also reflected another of our national passions, sport. In 2012, Ireland searched for the Olympics more than any other year.

The Games were searched at nearly twice the rate of 2016 or 2021. And that year, Katie Taylor was the top-searched person in relation to the Olympics in Ireland. That was of course the year the champion Bray boxer won gold in London, realising the dreams of a nation.

Boxing fever was also evident with the top trending question: ‘When is Katie Taylor fighting in the Olympics?’.

In 2016, Annalise Murphy was the top-searched Irish Olympian during the Olympic Games. Murphy, from Dublin, made our searches worthwhile, when she returned home with a silver medal.

While American Michael Phelps was the top-searched Olympian overall that year.

The nation will no doubt be doing plenty of rugby related searches later this year but in 2009 ‘grand slam’ was a breakout search in March of that year, after Ireland’s historic Six Nations win. This year Ireland vs England was the top-searched match-up of the Six Nations tournament in Ireland. While the search question: ‘What's a grand slam in rugby?’ spiked +700pc during the tournament.

Ireland’s love for pancakes is in no doubt as ‘How to make pancakes’ regularly tops the trending searches.

In 2014 ‘How to make loom bands’ - plastic or rubber arm bands - was the most searched question. While in 2015 people turned to Google to find out ‘How to use new Snapchat’ .

The most searched ‘What is’ terms brings us back to some referendums past.

In 2008 ‘What is the Lisbon Treaty’ was the most searched 'what is’ question and 10 years later in 2018 it was ‘What is blasphemy’.

“Some of the past 20 years' searches for ‘definition’ give an insight to the cultural moments of the time,” a Google spokesperson said.

“In 2013 ‘twerk ’ topped the list, ‘despacito’ was the most searched phrase in 2017 and in 2019, the year impeachment proceedings began for Donald Trump, ‘impeachment’ was the most searched definition term in Ireland.”

The spokesperson added: “Search can help you find a world of information – and the way people use search can be a window into the world.”