COVID-19 Australia: Bidets, ‘toilet paper alternatives’ the big winners on Google Search | The Canberra Times

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Toilet paper alternatives including bidets were the big winner of Covid lockdown, according to new research about Australians’ Google searches in 2020. The phrase rose 36,100 per cent from 50 to 18,100 searches when comparing March 2019 with March 2020, Google Search data collated by digital marketer Jarred Bennett shows. The traditional “toilet paper” phrase rose only 27,627 per cent in the same period, from 4400 to 1.2 million searches. Of those alternatives, paper towel topped the list (1642 per cent) followed by bidets (1263 per cent), baby wipes (658 per cent) and tissues (652 per cent). “Yes, toilet paper gets its own section in this report – with an astronomical spike in searches in March 2020,” Mr Bennett said. “Whilst lockdowns and border closures have certainly decimated the search interest in some industries, others have experienced never seen before levels of demand.” Dr Alex Russell, Senior Postdoctoral Fellow at CQUniversity’s psychology department, said people had different reasons to panic buy toilet paper and its alternatives. “People wanting to feel in control is probably a large part of it, but I’m not really aware of any research that can confirm that,” he said. “As you might imagine, there isn’t a huge amount of public research funding to examine toilet paper buying.” Dr Russell said it was “natural instinct” as most people were just trying to look after…

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