Welcome to the World According to Search from the BBC World Service.

I'm Ben Aragandade, journalist, author, and book publisher.

And in this program, I'll be traveling across the globe in pursuit of the most popular weird and wonderful internet searches

in different countries and the fascinating stories behind them.

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

It makes sense that we're asking these things to the higher being in our normal worlds right now, which is the ones we carry around in our hands.

I want to know what these searches might reveal about us and our relationship with technology.

I also want to know what controls the search results we see.

I did a search on professor, myself being a professor, a black woman, and finding almost

exclusively white men as the images.

I mean, this really sends a powerful signal.

My interest in this subject began when I was doing keyword research

from my books and websites,

and I kept coming across different variations on search terms.

And there are a lot of these searches.

Did you know that Google alone records an incredible 5.6 billion of them globally per day. With this data, perhaps Google knows what you're thinking, feeling and worrying about.

From queries about

superhero movies or football matches to questions about elections,

cochory or the pandemic.

And the data that's collected spans the globe

from whole countries to tiny villages.

We are kind of very romantic in this region of the world.

...