Google Trends search volume

Google Trends data indicate how often certain keywords are searched on the internet and serve as a proxy for information demand and attention paid to a topic. Data on the Google search volume were downloaded from Google Trends [54]. In contrast to common words used in the scientific literature, news outlets and laypeople in Germany used the term ‘corona’ much more frequently than COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2; therefore, we focussed on the search term ‘corona’ only. Thus, the data represent only the search interest regarding ‘corona’, relative to the maximum interest (number of searches) for Germany between 25 February and 25 March 2020. As provided by Google Trends, a value of 100 indicated peak popularity for the term, 50 indicated moderate popularity and zero indicated that there was not enough data for this term.