Google’s News Lab collaborated on visual site that shows most common ‘How To’ questions online

The phrase “Google it” is such an important part of our lexicon for years already. But what do we Google exactly? A new website made by Google’s News Lab team together with interactive visual data journalist Xaquin G.V. delves into the searches we made starting with the words “How To.” These two words apparently make up a lot of our searches on the site. Inspired by his own searches of how to fix things around the house, the site makes use of Google and its Trends tools to show what tops the “How to” searches are for different countries. As TechCrunch points out, in Canada, how to searches related to doors, toilets, and fridges are commonly looked up.

On top of that, the site has an essay that looks in the top 100 “How To” searches made around the world to see what we usually need help with. Xaquin breaks this down into categories and adds visual representation of how popular each topic is. The site is highly responsive and looks great on mobile. It was deliberate on their part as Google News Lab Data Editor Simon Rogers said, they wanted to focus on the site’s mobile performance for visual storytelling as this is how people access information. Rogers also said projects like this help them see how their data can be used to tell stories and perhaps fuel interest in creating great data-based journalism.