Valentine’s Day: Romantic searches spike on Google in Nigeria – Report

Nigerians went all out recently as Google Search trends showed that there were huge spikes in Valentine’s Day-related searches.

In a statement issued on Friday, Google reported that the search for “how to be romantic to your boyfriend on phone” spiked by 250 per cent, while ‘gift for boyfriend’ was searched 71 per cent more than ‘gift for girlfriend’ in the past week by Nigerians.

The search for the ‘history of valentine day celebration’ and ‘valentine love letter’ spiked by 400 per cent and 550 per cent respectively.

‘Valentine message for my love’ also increased by 300 per cent in the past week.

Search interest for online dating apps also peaked within the period of the COVID-19 pandemic, a reflection that Nigerians who could not physically get together were finding alternatives with online dating apps.

Searches for ‘good morning love message’ doubled by 111 per cent in January 2021 compared to January 2020.

Overall, search interest for Valentine’s Day in Nigeria has been declining gradually in the last few years from 2004 to 2021.

Some of the related questions Nigerians also asked in the week preceding Valentine’s Day were ‘What is love?’, ‘What is the meaning of love?’, ‘How to know if a guy loves you?’, ‘How to know if a girl loves you?’ and ‘How to ask a girl out?’.

‘How to make love?’ was also one of the top questions asked in the past week, as well as ‘How to make a Valentine Card?’, ‘How to package Valentine gifts?’, ‘How to dress on Valentine?’ and ‘How to ask a girl to be your Valentine?’

The statement noted that Google processes more than 40,000 search queries every second, which translates to more than a billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year, worldwide.