Yesterday’s travel bubble announcement prompted an enormous surge in people searching for the news, largely driven by people in Australia and New Zealand, and booking flights.
Just after 4pm yesterday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced there'd be quarantine-free travel between New Zealand and Australia from 11.59pm on April 18.
It coincided with a massive increase in people looking for information about a trans-Tasman bubble.
Searches for the phrases "trans Tasman bubble rules" and "NZ Australia travel bubble" surged worldwide, Google said today.
Search traffic for the term "NZ Australia travel bubble" was up 1700 per cent yesterday, according to the search engine.
Within New Zealand, yesterday was the time it was searched the most since the pandemic began.
Related search terms also saw a boost, Google data shows.
Searches for "immigration NZ" were up 50 per cent, while "traffic light system travel" — being used worldwide, and also part of the new bubble — was up 1500 per cent worldwide.
There were more than 100,000 searches for "Air New Zealand" yesterday, becoming the top trending search for New Zealand. Comparatively, Monday's most searched term was searched more than 10,000 times.
But people weren't just searching for information about the travel bubble.
"Australia Covid cases" and "Air New Zealand shares" were two new breakout search terms within New Zealand, as well as "flights to Australia from NZ".
“Flights to Australia” was searched yesterday three times as often as it usually is.
SHARE ME