Trending pests

When you search for a topic with Google, you get a list of websites related to your topic. When you search for a topic at Google Trends, you get a page of metadata about who else has searched for that topic. Organic Lesson just posted a story about their searches at Google Trends for the searches people do for ways to deal with pests.

According to this story, in the US in 2018, the pests that most bothered people into searching for remedies were flies, ants, and bedbugs. Mosquitoes were number four:

In one small region of the country, northern New England, mice were the primary pest getting people to search for how to get of rid of them:

In Vermont, mice bothered us the most and mosquitoes were number five:

These results are fun, but probably not very reliable. Organic Lesson had to decide which phrases to search for: “We specifically looked at pest control keywords with a DIY intent, such as ‘bed bug remedies’, ‘mosquito traps’, and ‘how to get rid of fruit flies’.” This selection of phrases has a huge impact on the results.

I tried a few different phrases to learn about Vermont’s dislike of mice. People in Vermont are not looking for violent ways to deal with mice. Here in northern New England, we don’t want to poison mice, and in Vermont we don’t even search much for killing them. In the maps below, the darker the blue, the more interest there was in searching for that phrase.

But Vermonters have no problem looking for ways to trap or “get rid of” mice. Apparently we are in search of the kindler, gentler ways to deal with our mouse issues.

So how do we feel about controlling mosquitoes? It looks like not many people north of Florida jump right to “spray mosquitoes.”

Maybe the Lemon Fair and BLSG insect control districts should reevaluate their missions and just start handing out Havahart traps.

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