Search trends suggest SA is turning to ‘homemade alcohol’ during lockdown

South Africans are focusing on learning during the lockdown, with some perhaps considering impromptu careers in craft brewing and homemade alcohol.

As lockdown enters its final week (thank goodness), South Africans are entering the second week of the alcohol ban too. And you can tell it’s really affecting some people.

Google on Thursday sent through an interesting look at search trends across the past seven days, highlighting that searches for some alcohol-related content in South Africa has spiked by 500% over the previous week.

You can visibly see the sudden increase when rolling back the search graph to 90 days.

“Search interest is plotted on an index of 0 – 100 and anything over 40 indicates high levels of search interest relative to other terms being searched at the time,” explains Google.

“The Free State, North West, Mpumalanga and Limpopo all showed high levels of search interest for the term ‘homemade alcohol’, while the Northern Cape showed very low levels of search interest for all of these terms.”

For example:

Interestingly, Google also revealed some other related searches it’s seen recently. Some are proper zingers:

• how to make your own alcohol
• where to get alcohol during lockdown
• homemade alcohol at home
• homemade beer recipes South Africa
• can homemade pineapple beer make you drink
• homemade gin
• homemade alcoholic pineapple beer
• how to make alcohol at home fast

Compared to more pressing issues at the moment, these search spikes do pale in comparison to the likes of “COVID”, “COVID-19”, or “coronavirus”.

Just look at the sudden jump “COVID” has had compared to other alcohol-related searches.

So while the graphs may give the impression that South Africans in every corner are suddenly budding craft brewers, it probably isn’t the case. It’s nevertheless interesting to note the surge the lockdown, and resultant alcohol ban, has had on local’s search habits.

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Feature image: Pexels by Pixabay