Last week, popular Filipino showbiz loveteam KathNiel—actors Kathryn Bernardo and Daniel Padilla—shocked the world by officially announcing the end of their reel-to-real-life relationship, after spending 11 years together.
It didn’t take long for this major development to arouse the interest of fans and netizens, as they instantly took to Google Search to look up everything about Bernardo, Padilla, and the KathNiel love team. Google Trends recorded the highest interest the pair has had in the last five years, with both fully dominating searches in the week of November 26.
Padilla himself topped the trends with more than 200,000 searches on Bonifacio Day on November 30, far eclipsing Philippine hero Andres Bonifacio, who had only over 20,000 searches.
The KathNiel trend had also been brewing steadily over the past few weeks, as interest started climbing after talent manager Ogie Diaz teased the couple’s possible split early in November.
When compared to other love teams “JaDine”, “LizQuen”, “KimXi”, and “DonBelle”, “KathNiel” is the most searched on Google since 2011 both locally and globally – even on YouTube.
Google Trends shows search percentages of specific keywords per country or subregion, exhibiting how much people search for them compared to other keywords over a period of time.
This data around “KathNiel” shows Filipinos go to Google to learn more about news, trending topics, and even entertainment. In 2022 alone, five out of 10 overall top trending Google searches in the Philippines are lifestyle- and entertainment-related.