How to understand Putin’s speech? Ask us your questions

Since Vladimir Putin announced a partial demobilization in Russia, Internet users have noticed an increase in some Google searches for the country. In their view, they reflect the reluctance of part of the Russian population to directly participate in the conflict in Ukraine.

For example, this is the case of requests ” How to break your arm » Where ” How to leave Russia »Peaks have been experienced in recent hours or days, according to the Google Trends tool, which allows you to observe how the popularity of certain queries on the search engine evolves over time and in a given geographic area.

However, these upheavals must be put into perspective. First, the tool provided by Google does not provide statistics in absolute value, but in relative value: they show the intensity of the increase, but not the overall amount. In other words, a slight increase can cause a significant spike if the phrase has never been searched for before. In this case, comparison with other studies, for example “Vladimir Putin” Where “Bread Recipe” In both cases, it shows that the volume actually appears to be significant.

But above all, it can be seen that these two demands have already experienced ups and downs in the past, sometimes too much. First, “How to Break Your Arm”, this summer has already peaked. Secondly, How to leave RussiaIts current resurgence on the Google search engine has not matched the peak seen when the conflict erupted in late February.

Finally, it should be noted that Google’s search engine is not as popular in Russia as it is in France, with other services including Yandex.