Trump's “DISINFECTANT INJECTIONS” impact search patterns

It’s been such an incredible call out that you would not believe it. Still it was true. The President of the United States seriously considered injecting disinfectant in the human body to cure Covid-19!

We are not here to comment on this. What we wanted to check out was how it impacted search patterns on Google and Amazon, and what we may learn from it.

Our first finding is crystal clear: people in the US asked Google whether or not you could inject disinfectant in your body. Searches for “disinfectant” spiked just after Trump’s remarks during the COVID-19 daily briefing on April 23rd. And there was a another peak the day after.

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The topics which were the most associated with this research were, as you would guess, “injection”, followed by “Trump” and “sarcasm.”

The second question we asked ourselves was if “disinfectant” items would sell more following Trump’s involuntary advertisement.

So we turned to Amazon.com to see how the queries containing “disinfectant” were trending. It seems that American people are more rational than their current leader. Our research found no significant change in the search patterns for “disinfectant” on Amazon.com. Variation on April 23rd and April 24th are within one standard deviation from the median.

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Key takeaway

First, Google and Amazon serve two very different purposes. People turn to Google for information and to Amazon for shopping. That no big news but this story demonstrates it once more, at a time when Google Shopping is going through some structural changes.

Second, American people know more about the dangerous impact of disinfectant on the human body than their commander in chief. They did not rush to buy more bleach following their President’s advice.

And this is probably the most reassuring learning.