We are facing coronavirus, one of the biggest, most infectious, and deadliest cases in the past few centuries. Undoubtedly, the fact that conscious, prudent, and prudent people quarantine themselves in their homes and give up all the activities they can do on an ordinary day and the measures taken as a country have affected many sectors financially and morally. While those who work physically and at work cannot go to their jobs, the digital segment that can work at home seems more fortunate. So is it really so? How was digital affected by this outbreak?
- Houses have now become offices,
- All physical meetings left their places to online meetings,
- Communications with the phone decreased, and correspondence and video calls increased,
- Many brands have started optimizing their websites for a large audience that does not leave their homes,
- Brands whose sales and traffic have declined had to take some material measures,
- With the suspicions of hygiene to workplaces (installations, repairs, etc.) that provide on-site services, demands have decreased,
- To encourage people staying at home, platforms like Netflix have added new movies or current series to their archives earlier than planned,
- On social media, artists began to give concerts, chat with fans on many famous live streams, etc.
So what has changed in searches made in Search Engines?
Many news sites and brands have lost their traffic. (Eg finance, tourism, clothing, etc.) On the other hand, they have to develop an extra strategy for the brand to survive.
While the clothing sector prepares the types of clothing that can be worn while doing sports at home, marketplaces make preparations that focus on activities that can be spent time with the family at home and the basic needs of homes.
Searches for up-to-date information increased tremendously. People are trying to get information by searching the search engines for all the symptoms they suspect coronavirus in the atmosphere of panic.
Searches such as respiratory distress, runny nose, hand washing, corona medicine, corona symptoms have increased to higher levels in search engines. We can observe that searches such as virus masks, virus films, how the virus reproduces, etc. have increased recently.
Since there is a lot of information pollution in such cases, Google makes some snippet improvements to provide users with statements of the World Health Organization, while seriously detecting misleading sources of information.