DATA: How Consumers Are Reacting to Coronavirus Scare

News of the Coronavirus continues to grow. SEMrush, a data analytics company, analyzed Google search volume on the topic to collect data on how much interest in ‘Coronavirus’ is growing in the US alone.

Sharing SEMrush’s findings below:

- In January 2020 over 2,200,000 people searched for masks on the internet, which is 45.34 times higher than searches in December 2019 – there were only around 50K searches per month

- Number of Google searches for [N95 masks] is 5 times higher than for [medical masks]: 1MLN vs. 200K (+3903.00% increase in searches)

- In January 2020 a new search term appeared in Google – “Coronavirus mask” which was never googled before. But, in Jan 2020 it already accounted for 49,500 searches per month.

- Walgreens, Walmart and Home Depot are the most popular places where people bought masks in Jan 2020, searches for buying a mask in these places accounted for 45,300 (Walgreens);  44,900 (Walmart); and 25,980 (Home Depot) respectively.

- Searches for “Buy a (medical/n95) mask near me” has sharply risen in January by 2,988.00% and accounted for 19,720 per month.

Coronavirus related Google searches:

- [Coronavirus] search term – over 49 million searches in January 2020 (+75,051.52% Jan/Dec growth)

- [Coronavirus symptoms] – the most searched query related to the topic, with >6 mln searches a month (+611,900.00% Jan/Dec growth)

- [What is coronavirus?] – the most asked question, related to the topic – over 2,2 mln searches a month (+139,900.00% Jan/Dec growth)

- Unfortunately, searches for [Coronavirus treatment] have also increased a lot – by 93,650.00% and account for 450,000 searches in January