To surface Olympic-related search trends, we used proprietary data mining tools built by Google engineers that helped our team of strategists analyze the data in new and interesting ways. As trends emerged, we got to work, telling stories unique to the data. Surfacing, as it unfolded, the unexpected side of the Olympics, drawn from the data and visualized through a set of characters we created, nicknamed — Googins.

From a mountain of Olympic data, we plucked spikes and surges, correlating searches, top searched questions around an athlete, sport, or country, and we were even able to analyze the speed at which countries searched for their athletes after a win.

Our team responded to search trends within minutes. Coverage spanned 17 Days, covering 10,500 Athletes, 206 Countries, and 300 Events. In the end, we celebrated the Games by representing the people watching the Games, fueling user delight in a way only search can.

The campaign had twice as much reach as any of the official Olympics sponsors. The Google Trends hub kept people engaged for an average of 3 minutes with only a 7% bounce rate. We reached 1.8 billion people in 142 countries with a real time response, creating over 200 stories, spanning all 17 days.