r/mildyinteresting • u/summerjonn • Aug 27 '26

humankind hiccups 😅 My cycle has been off this past month, and apparently, according to Google Trends, so has everyone else’s!

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I did some quick research, and there was an unprecedented spike in searches for irregular periods over the past two months. So, it seems to be a universal thing. 

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518

u/OneTwoThreePooAndPee Aug 27 '26 edited Sep 02 '26

This is fuckin weird. The US has a much muted effect, but other countries globally (France, Worldwide, Japan, Colombia all below) show a WILD spike at the start of '26.

Edit: I think I figured this out.

Tldr: Since Gemini started cannibalizing Google searches the Trend search numbers have been underestimating people using Gemini/other AI for searching in place of Google search. Now those are being captured AND they're being done in English rather than local language bc that's how Gemini searches.

Google rolled out AI Search on the main Google page in early 2026. Before that time, people were using Gemini or other AI for health questions, or going to doctors. Now people go straight to the Google homepage, and those searches actually go straight into the Trend numbers where Gemini convos don't.

Also, if you look across countries, and other ailments ("back pain"), you see the same trend, BUT it's predicted by the level of English spoken in each country. In France/Colombia/Indonesia it's enormous, in the UK/Australia it barely exists, in the US it's moderate. I think this is a result of Gemini doing its background searches in English, even if it gives a result in the local language, so what used to be non-English searches for the same information have gone down alongside an increase in the English-language version of the ailment. THIS trend actually extends back a couple years in non-English countries when people were moving from Google search to Gemini, but once Gemini moves to the main search page, those inputs started being counted in Google Trends.

Edit: Thx for all the awards folks. 🥲 I will place them all in the hole in my heart left by my parents. Jk it's from eating batteries.

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u/Optimal_Benis Aug 27 '26

We also found other common problems spiking. Broken phone, fix clock, flat tire, check engine light, fix hair, broken window:

Probably people just using the AI more. Note, this won't work for things like hurricanes and tornadoes, because those spike when, like, they are actually happening.

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u/unsubix Aug 30 '26

The critical thought shown in this thread makes me hopeful for humanity. ❤️

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u/OneTwoThreePooAndPee Sep 01 '26

I got laid off from a large tech company and replaced by a minimum wage remote worker using AI. ☹️

1

u/OtherwiseAlbatross14 Aug 29 '26

Fuck Are they happening right now?? I would search but I don't know if they're happening

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49

u/OneTwoThreePooAndPee Aug 27 '26

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u/Spez_is-a-nazi Aug 28 '26

So periods are now no longer bound by time and space is how I'm supposed to interpret this?

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u/siriamunhinged Aug 31 '26

Inter-dimensional periods

37

u/w0bbie Aug 27 '26

Interesting! I suspected this trend had more to do with how the average person is using google today vs years past. I compared several other health symptoms and a couple car issues and found similar 2026 spikes: https://www.reddit.com/r/mildyinteresting/s/Nxkxyn5wZp

That may still be a contributing factor, but your theory about Gemini affecting the data in the background, especially given the correlation to how prominent English is in a given country, seems to explain why the trend is so sudden.

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u/OneTwoThreePooAndPee Aug 27 '26

I thought about that too. People being more willing to go to AI vs. waiting for a doctor or doing a bulk Google search would make a lot of sense.

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u/DrSixSmith Aug 30 '26

So basically Google made their own trends tool meaningless, a minor byproduct of forcing AI on everyone (after allowing their search product to be completely ruined anyway). OK Google.

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u/DenseAstronomer3631 Aug 30 '26

Look I'm very against AI too but the data should even out and we will just have a new baseline from now on. Seems like everything has had a massive search spike

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u/OneTwoThreePooAndPee Aug 30 '26

That's what all them datacenters is for.

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u/CyberCrutches Aug 28 '26

Dang, I was getting my hopes up that some crazy supernatural presence was disrupting our collective consciousness but as usual it’s just data aggregation “improvement.” Thanks for doing the work!

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u/Glerbthespider Aug 28 '26

even if you just search up random words, like 'car' or 'food' it also shows a massive spike

17

u/gaggledimension Aug 27 '26

https://giphy.com/gifs/ccRMvuh3PeuSGgOWVx

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u/Direct-Nectarine9875 Aug 28 '26

People search in their native languages, but Gemini searches in English. That's why you see a spike where English is not the first language, because there's coming more input in English now than before.

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u/devBowman Aug 28 '26

Google messing up their own trends measurements

4

u/meithan Aug 28 '26

Excellent finding. This is definitely it.

3

u/EddyToo Aug 29 '26

The biggest pitfalls in drawing conclusions from data (trends): Assuming that data is complete, correct and collected/processed the same way as yesterday.

Always question the data first. Well done!

3

u/sadi89 Aug 30 '26

Boooo logic and science and research ruin everything fun

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u/OneTwoThreePooAndPee Aug 30 '26

Ain't it the truth. Despite these findings, it's probably alien ghosts.

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u/nhorvath Aug 28 '26

great, yet another thing ai screwed up

1

u/shared_ptr Aug 29 '26

Or it means people are getting much more access to data on questions they found hard to pose to search engines before?

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u/Froggy3434 Aug 29 '26

So this is a result of how Google captures its data for the charts and not some strange phenomenon?

2

u/legacy-of-rats Aug 30 '26

Wow so AI is even fucking with internet search data. That's wild.

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u/albertoConadore Aug 30 '26

Wow, that makes a lot of sense. Bravo! 👍

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u/Agzarah Aug 30 '26

Can you search the trends to show the opposite effect in non English language results?

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u/opakvostana Aug 30 '26

Great, so google trends is basically useless now for historical trend data.

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u/msciwoj1 Aug 30 '26

To try and falsify this, you should additionally look at the number of searches of "late period" translated to French in France. They should go down as the people searching start using Gemini, which searches in English.

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u/OneTwoThreePooAndPee Aug 30 '26

Did that! That's the multi year trend I was referring to, a lot of these countries show a slow decline for a couple years before this spike. Definitely requires more careful inspection to be sure, I was just eyeballing that.

1

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u/ThreeDegreesInACoat Sep 01 '26

Ok, wow, thank you, that was insightful.

1

u/royston_blazey Sep 02 '26

Amazing thinking. Kudos to you!