• by Gord Hotchkiss , Featured Contributor, April 4, 2017

I was planning on writing a very erudite column on how our consumption of news has drastically changed, when I decided to do a research check on Google Trends and found something interesting. It should come as no surprise to learn that Donald Trump is dominating news searches on Google.

What was surprising: the number-one audience with an appetite for “Trumpie Tidbits” is Canadians. That’s right, my fellow countrymen can’t get enough of the guy. We, as a nation, search more for news on Donald Trump than any other place on earth, even the U.S.  We out search you Americans on Google by margin of almost 25% (mind you, that margin reverses for Web searches for Trump, but we’re still number 2 in the world).

Why?

I could offer some psychologically plausible reasons having to do with morbid curiosity, voyeurism, schadenfreude or even the Stockholm Syndrome, but honestly, I have no idea why we’re submitting ourselves to this. Maybe it’s giving us something to do during our abnormally long winters. Since we’re already miserable as hell, maybe we feel we have nothing to lose?

This is somewhat ironic, given that according to several highly reputable online polls, we have the hottest leader in the world right now: one Monsieur Trudeau. But even as photogenic as Justin is, when it comes to launching a Google search, our vote still goes to Trump.  When you compare searches for Trump during his election to searches for Trudeau during his election -- in Canada, no less -- Trump wins by a margin of 2 to 1.

But it’s not just us. Trump’s domination of the search zeitgeist is historic. Google shows relative volumes, with 100 representing the peak popularity. For Trump, this peak corresponded with his election in November. A second peak, at 65, came with his inauguration. Never in the entire length of Barack Obama’s presidency did he ever come close to this. The nearest was during his first election in 2008, when he peaked at 55. So, in one category at least, Trump would be accurate in claiming a historic win.

I thought I’d see if this pattern holds up globally. Angela Merkel is barely a blip on Google’s search radar. Worldwide, she has never peaked above 1 compared to Trump’s peak score of 100. Perhaps that’s why he refused to shake her hand.  Even in Deutschland itself, she peaked at a paltry 17 in the last five years against the Trump standard of 100.

Poor Theresa May, the new leader of the United Kingdom, can’t catch a break either. Even on the week she assumed power, Donald Trump gained more searches worldwide by a solid 3 to 1 margin.

So let’s put this to the acid test: Trump vs Putin. Worldwide over the past five years, it was no contest. Trump: 100, Putin: 3 (scored the week of March 2- 8, 2014, when Putin was making noises about reclaiming Crimea). And yes, even if we restrict the searches to those coming only from Russia, Trump’s best outscored Putin’s best (in June of 2013) by a margin of 2 to 1.

This probably shouldn’t surprise me. According to Google, Donald Trump outscored everyone when it came to searches in 2016. In fact, he came third on Google’s list of most popular searches of any kind, just after Pokémon Go and iPhone 7. The world is locked in a morbid fascination with all that is Trump.

I’d love to wrap up this column with something philosophical and enlightened. It would be good to pass on some tidbit of behavioral wisdom that would put all this search activity into perspective.

But that’s not going to happen. All I know is that I’m as guilty as anyone. Since Nov. 8, I search almost daily for ‘Trump” just to see what the last 24 hours hath wrought. I call it my Daily WTF Round Up.

Apparently I’m not alone.