Every year, the Google Doodle for Earth Day raises massive public awareness for “climate change” and climate change topics.
Google Search Data shows that 1,102,860 searches were made for the term “climate change” in the US on April 22, 2024 the day we celebrated Earth Day. This is a 16,485% spike, when compared to the average daily searches of 6,690.
Similar spikes were observed on April 22 2023 and April 22 2022, when Google showed another Doodle related to climate change. When a person clicked on the Doodle, it opened a search page for the term “climate change”.
In fact the April 22 2022 Earth Day Google Doodle was the most successful, bringing in a record number of searches for the term “climate change” close to to 2,169,230 (for the week of April 17-24 2022, however the majority of searches were made on 22 April).
The Doodle showed time-lapse satellite images depicting melting glaciers, receding snow cover, deforestation, and coral bleaching.
Image Credit: Google
However, searches for “climate change” only spiked on April 22 in the years 2024, 2023 and 2022 (see below).
Why aren’t there massive spikes on Earth Day in 2021 and the years prior to that?
The answer is simple, for those years, Google showed an interactive video as the Doodle. The video prompted people to play an interactive game and learn about a particular environmental topic, without giving them the option to click on the video and open a search results page for “climate change”.
Image Credit: Google
A spokesperson from EcoFurnitureLiving, who did the study commented on the findings: “People are most likely to think about climate change and environmental topics, on Earth Day. Looking at graph from Google Trends, we don’t see any big spikes in any other day or period throughout the year.
Even Earth Hour celebrated on March 23 or the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) held on 30 Nov. – 12 Dec. 2023 didn’t come close.
And this is largely thanks to the Doodle image shown on the biggest search engine. It will be interesting to see what Doodle, Google decides to display next year.”
The exact Google Search Data numbers can be found here.
Additional notes: on April 22, 2024 when a person clicked on the Doodle it took them to the Google search page for “climate change progress”. Both terms “climate change” and “climate change progress” received similar amount of search volumes.
