Picture of the portable bidet

Bidet – Google search increases 300% due to toilet paper panic.

My sister’s father-in-law once advised me

“When the conversation turns to toilet humour, you know it’s time to leave.”

A wise man indeed.

Well, Google Trends has turned to the toilet – to the bidet specifically (Twitter too). It’s predicting that the search term’s popularity has skyrocketed in the month of March. Driven by the panic buying of toilet paper [my guess].

Here’s a screenshot from Google Trends “bidet” graph.

Google trends graph showing the massive spike of searches for bidet
Google Trends show bidet search spike.

What I find more interesting are the rising queries.

  • “bidet toilet attachment” is up 300%
  • “what is a bidet” it up 70%
  • “portable bidet” is up 60% (what?! Why would you?)
Picture showing the related search terms for Bidet and their increase.
Searches for “bidet toilet attachment” up 300% acording to Google Trends

Turns out there is such a thing as a portable bidet.

And it’s created by a company called Tushy. View their portable bidet.

I’m giving them keyword-rich anchor text purely for the fact they have a portable bidet and for this dude:

Picture of the portable bidet
The portable bidet by Tushy – my mind is blown, and a little disturbed.

They deserve all the Google traffic purely for the above…

This story shows the beauty of Google Trends during a global event, particually one of heightened emotion such as a pandemic or catastrophe. Normally a large event may cause a slight blip on Google Trends, but at times like this the data shows massive spikes around really random search terms.

The sheer panic around buying toilet paper has made people look for alternative solutions to their problem. That’s why there is a 300% increase in searches for bidet.

Understanding search intent and your audience’s pain point is core to SEO. In a perfect example those two things will let you employ predictive SEO.

As an example, imagine if an SEO or content strategist at Tushy had foreseen that a shortage in toilet paper would mean people look for alternatives such as bidets. So they created a page optimised around that topic.

It would = more traffic from search.

They could also have an educational page around “bidet vs toilet paper” – which I would expect to be in their content strategy though haven’t found one yet. Their blog is filled with “cute” toilet puns and hidden in the site architecture. I had to use a Google site search to find it.

Sorry, I’ve just found it. It’s listed in a drop down on the nav as The Posterior – I thought those links were all products and it took a while to realise they were buttons. Moral of the story, call your blog a blog – use the language users expect. Content Design 101.

I’m digressing massively.

My point was, if you’re able to forsee the needs of your audience, or even better already have the content published due to a solid strategy, then predictive SEO is amazing. Plus, Google Trends can help.

What is a bidet?

For those who don’t know, it’s basically a sink for your bottom, it squirts warter to clean you instead of using toilet paper.

In the words of Tushy – Doo your Doo then squeeze and spray…

You can buy attachements for your toilet that will do a similar thing. Though at the time of writing Amazon was sold out.

A bidet for the brave

Detachable showerheads and garden hoses made me howl – all can be found by searching Twitter for bidet.

Twitter exchange about using a showerhead as a bidet.


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