The World Cup final pushed Google Search to its highest traffic ever

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has announced that the search engine broke all previous records during the FIFA World Cup final on December 18, 2022, which he described as “one of the greatest games ever.”

In a tweet the following day, Pichai noted, “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!”

The company rolled out a handful of new features ahead of the opening game to help solidify its position as a go-to source of up-to-date information, making tweaks to “World Cup” search results.

World Cup search volume

It was made even easier to find a list of upcoming matches and relevant information, and mobile users could customize notifications for any number of participating countries.

Google isn’t the only company that saw high volumes during the World Cup final; Twitter CEO, Elon Musk, announced in a Tweet that a goal by France saw the platform handle a record-breaking 24,400 Tweets per second.

According to a Twitter blog article, there were 147 billion impressions of the #WC2022 hashtag globally, topping the #WC2018 figures and more than doubling those of the #Tokyo2020 Olympics.

The two most popular games, measured in Tweets per minute, were Argentina vs France, and Croatia vs Brazil, occupying the top five places, with Messi drumming up the most conversation on the social media platform.

Pichai and Musk aren’t the only execs to have publicly expressed their excitement during the final – Apple CEO, Tim Cook, also took to Twitter to describe it as “one of the greatest games I’ve even seen.” 

Google and Twitter’s readiness to adapt and cater to fans has undoubtedly helped the platforms remain among the top performing for global events such as the World Cup.

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