Whether you’re a football fan or not, it’s hard to deny that the World Cup Final between Argentina and France was an amazing game between two well-balanced teams. With the pressures of such crucial matches often typically leading to rather drab defensive styles of play, however, I would be willing to place a small wager that the number of people watching it likely shot up quite notably after half time, and then again after full-time when the likelihood of penalties loomed ever larger.
Put simply, I think interest in the game grew quite massively when people figured out that this was actually going to be a heavily contested final. And in something that seems to confirm this point, following a Twitter post from Google CEO Sundar Pichai, he has said that the search engine traffic generated during the World Cup Final has set a brand new record for the platform.
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
World Cup Final Sets New Google Traffic Record
Google’s announcement comes pretty much hand in hand with a post from Twitter CEO Elon Musk who stated that when the (presumably) second France goal was scored, a new record was set on the social media platform with around 24,400 Tweets being made per second.
So, definitely good for social media and internet sites in general right? Well, yes and no. I would be interested to see what Google’s actual top searches were during this period.
Am I too cynical in believing that something along the lines of “where can I watch the world cup final for free” or “world cup final live stream” was probably top of the list?… I’d ask Sundar but I daresay he wouldn’t be quite so willing to announce that news from the rooftops!
What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!
