The 2024 Summer Olympic games in Paris are live and Google Trends expert Jessica Flores joins me to speak about the top searched Olympic topics trending on Google.
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Google Olympic Transcription
Announcer – 0:00: Mason Vera Paine.
Mason Paine – 0:01: The Olympics are here. Find out what are some of the top searches of fans during the Summer games with Google trends expert Jessica Flores. Thanks for joining me, Jessica.
Jessica Flores – 0:10: Great to be here. Nice to talk to you.
Mason Paine – 0:12: So, Olympics, it just started, but you know what, how long is it going to last for?
Jessica Flores – 0:17: Oh, I love the Olympics. I think it’s 16 days. Right. And we are seeing a bunch of things people are searching for on Google already. They want to know the schedule. They want to know exactly that. Like how long is this going to last for? They want to know when folks are going to do certain events. We’re seeing big breakout search terms like artistic gymnastics.
Jessica Flores – 0:39: We’re seeing a breakdancing. We have a huge spike there because of course, it’s the first time. Break dancing is part of the Summer Olympics. A lot of people, they want to.
Mason Paine – 0:48: Know what that about break dancing. Oh, my God. I didn’t even know that was a thing. Has it started yet?
Jessica Flores – 0:54: That’s a good question. Let’s look. Let’s Google that. I believe breakdown thing is, it’s a little bit away. But the cool thing is Google is going to help you through all of these questions. So if you google anything like breakdown thing, you know, us Olympic schedule, it will show you right at the very top, an information panel that will give you everything you need to know so you don’t have to click through seven different websites to figure that out. So, for example, I’m seeing right now, okay, breaking the pre qualifier battle 07:00 a.m. August 9.
Jessica Flores – 1:26: So you know right away, okay, that’s when I can watch it. And the other thing is it customizes it to your local time so it knows exactly like, okay, so if you’re in the Chicago area, it’s going to give you time based on where you are.
Mason Paine – 1:41: Oh, my God. That is really helpful because that’s true. I remember way back when, when I would watch the Olympics religiously, you know, like, especially in Japan, some of those events started at like three in the morning, so you didn’t know you had to convert the time. That’s a lot of stuff I don’t want to do.
Jessica Flores – 1:58: Right, and the other thing is you’re not going to wake up at 03:00 a.m. to watch every game. So you want to know, okay, where, where, who has the most medal, who won? And you can just, when you google Olympics or Olympic medal count, something like that right at the very top, it’ll give you a breakdown of all the countries and it’ll show you who’s leading the way? So us right now, I believe the last I check was around 20 medals. We have a couple of gold medals in there. Yesterday, the men’s artistic gymnastics team took home the bronze, which was like the first time they took home a medal in almost two decades, 16 years, I believe. And there’s also a hometown Olympian there that helped the men team take home that medal, Paul Juda.
Mason Paine – 2:43: Was there anything else that was trending? Like, I know a lot of people had a problem with the opening, but was there any searches for, like, Celine Dion?
Jessica Flores – 2:51: Yeah, I mean, if you saw her performance, you could not help but get emotional and then want to watch that after. So we did see a huge increase in people searching for Celine Dion Olympic performance. Also, people wanted to know what song did she sing? So the term what song did Celine Dion sing at the Olympics that had a huge spike, about 3000 percentage points. That was really cool.
Mason Paine – 3:17: Yeah. I had to look up what her disease was. It’s that stiff person syndrome. So every time she does any kind of, like, concert or she just comes out for an event, I like to watch it because, I mean, she’s coming out for us and she’s performing and she’s got this thing happening. And I’m like, we need to enjoy her while we can. And I think that’s wonderful. She came out for this.
Jessica Flores – 3:38: I literally was teary eyed because it was so emotional. I had no idea what she was thinking. I mean, I don’t speak French. I, but you could just tell she poured her heart into her performance and it was just beautiful.
Mason Paine – 3:49: Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Is there any particular sport that’s trending super high right now?
Jessica Flores – 3:55: We saw a huge spike in break dancing, but there’s other sports that are newer to the Olympic games. So skateboarding, sport climbing, surfing, those are seeing huge bumps. And surfing is a really interesting sport this year because happening very far from Paris all the way into Tahiti. And so there’s a lot of interest in what’s going on over there as well.
Mason Paine – 4:17: That is so funny. I saw that as part of the game schedule and I was wondering, like, where are they surfing? Like, did they go into a water park?
Jessica Flores – 4:27: Yeah, I know. It’s really interesting. And I believe surfing is started to become part of that summer game four years ago. So all of these games are, you know, they’re newer. So people are really interested in how it’s all going to work, you know, who’s participating, what countries are going to do well.
Mason Paine – 4:42: It’s funny, I went down this rabbit hole about the Olympic, how they determine what games go into it. And it’s the International Olympic Committee and they are the ones who decide, oh, these games go inside. And this one for this year, it was just a tidbit of tug of war was once an Olympic game and I’m like, I want that back. I think I could participate in a tug of war. Like, if it was a lot of people.
Jessica Flores – 5:08: There’s your chance to be an Olympian, right? Like, maybe. Maybe some games that some of us spoke to haven’t been training for four years. That’d be nice.
Mason Paine – 5:18: Absolutely. I think tug of war is something we all could get behind and it’s something I think we should have in there. A lot of games that were like, I was thinking to myself, you don’t see right now in synchronized swimming. I was shocked it wasn’t in there. I absolutely love that sport. I mean, they have to force the smile. They’ve got weird gel in their hair. Like, it has to be, like, strangely perfect.
Mason Paine – 5:39: I enjoy it and it just wasn’t part of it. Was there a particular sport that you were looking forward to?
Jessica Flores – 5:44: I mean, I think we all love the artistic gymnastics, right? Like, I want to see Simone Biles. I want to all of, you know, the us women theme just dominate. What I didn’t realize. I can’t believe I didn’t realize, you know, there’s two types of gymnastics. There’s rhythmic gymnastics and artistic gymnastics, which are different. So the rhythmic gymnastics, it really focuses on kind of like the flexibility and the dance, and the artistic gymnastics, which we all kind of know as gymnastics, really think, you know, you’re thinking about more the technical element, the precision. What we see Simone Biles deliver every single time. So I thought that was really interesting.
Mason Paine – 6:22: Is there a men’s team for the artistic one?
Jessica Flores – 6:24: Oh, that’s a good question. I’m going to Google that. Yeah.
Mason Paine – 6:28: Right?
Jessica Flores – 6:28: Yes, artistic, yes. Rhythmic. I’m not sure the artistic gymnastic is the one that the us men’s team took home the bronze medal yesterday. Let’s look and see if there’s anything about rhythmic gymnastics for men. Let’s see. I think so. Well, essentially, it’s typically restricted to female participants. So this is why Google is going to be really your friend during the Olympics.
Jessica Flores – 6:54: There are just so many games. How can anybody possibly keep up with everything? So the good thing is Google makes it easy to find a lot of their information right up top at the information panel. And the other cool thing is, if you really want to dig into what’s trending out there, what are people looking for? Anybody can do this at home. You just go to google.com trend, and there’s a whole section on just Olympics where you can dive into what’s going on with volleyball or basketball or swimming or athletics and in general, track and field. So that’s where I recommend folks go. If they’re just really wanting to dive in, what are people searching for? This summer?
Mason Paine – 7:33: I used to just use the TV guide as reference for trying to figure out what programs were out there because that’s all we had back then. You’re right. Thank goodness for Google. Well, thank you, Jessica. I really appreciate you being here.
Jessica Flores – 7:45: Of course. Anytime.
Announcer – 7:49: This has been the Mason Vera Paine show. Thanks for listening.
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