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Google searches in times of world crises offer incredible insights into our humanity

We are constantly told that the internet has made us more isolated, polarized and selfish. But as a data editor at Google, my job is to glean insights from the mountain of search data, and I can tell you that the database of our actual intentions proves the exact opposite. 

It is arguably the biggest publicly available dataset in existence and can reasonably claim to represent humanity across the world. When disasters strike, human beings reliably follow a strict cognitive path — first, we seek to understand the threat, and second, we take action to help others. 

Our baseline setting in a crisis is compassion. To see this in action, we can simply look at how people search in response to a major natural disaster.

During the initial stages of an event, there is a rapid evolution in search queries. As a threat approaches, we first see a rise in informational queries — people seeking to understand what is happening and the scale of the danger.

But as the seriousness of the situation dawns, something shifts. We search for “how” — shifting from passively gathering information to actively responding. We saw this during Hurricane Harvey in 2017, where people battening down the hatches and stockpiling emergency supplies paused to........

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