With the announcement of “Full Mobilization” by Putin last week, there was a lot of discussion around the increases in Google search volume seen Russian Language searches in Russia relating to the news. Specifically, searches for “How to leave Russia” spiked massively. But what about other search phrases?
We took a look at Trends in Russian Language Searches in Russia from 9/19-/9/26 for the following terms:
- виза – Visa
- гуманитарная виза – Humanitarian Visa
- вид на жительство – Residency
- война – War
- повестки – Conscription Summons
These 5 searches (in Russian) saw massive increases in relative search volume, with the starkest changes coming immediately following Putin’s announcement of the mobilization and conscription. “War,” a term carefully avoided by Putin is up dramatically.
Searches Relating to Conscription Explode in Russia
In the day after Putin’s announcement, search volume for keywords relating to “Conscription and Conscription Notice” went up nearly 5x on average, with increases seen all over the country.
Which Regions in Russia are Searching for these Keywords the Most?
- Republic of Dagestan, Russia
- St Petersburg, Russia
- Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia
- Tyumen Oblast, Russia
- Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia
- Novosibirsk Oblast, Russia
- Leningrad Oblast, Russia
- Perm Krai, Russia
- Sakha Republic, Russia
- Khabarovsk Krai, Russia
- Stavropol Krai, Russia
- Primorsky Krai, Russia
- Kemerovo Oblast, Russia
- Moscow Oblast, Russia
- Saratov Oblast, Russia
Methodology
Raw data and data visualizations can be reviewed here.
All search volume data came from Google trends. Daily hourly trends data by region was collected from September 15, 2022 to September 26, 2022. Because the data was pulled by hour, aggregate values will likely not match what you see on trends.google.com because the web interface shows daily (not hourly) totals. Hourly data was acquired programmatically using PyTrends for each day in the range. It should be noted that data from Google Trends is on a 1-100 “popularity score” scale which is a comparative score of all regions for which Google Trends provides data. The values in the dataset reflect aggregations of this popularity score, not raw search counts (which Google does not provide).