‘Why do I fancy my lecturer?’ and 8 other weird questions students asked Google

07 Sep 2017

The little box on your Google homepage is a door leading to an infinite amount of information.

And, as it turns out, it is also the key to humankind’s most private desires, fears, and curiosities – the kind you are far too embarrassed to ask any other living person. Ever.

Now, for good or for worse, student accommodation provider Liberty Living ran a study to find out the “questions, worries, and preconceptions” university students from these data.

Using auto-complete data from UberSuggest, a keyword search tool, Liberty Living was able to search for keyword ideas based on queries that began with ““Why is [City name] University” and left the rest blank.

What then happens is that UberSuggest uses Google search data to fill in the blank space based on users’ previous searches.

The results are a fair mix of deep, philosophical questions that delve right into the very meaning of life to questions that were downright awkward to ask even your closest friend. (Though, they probably would not bizarre as “I am extremely terrified of Chinese people” or the answer to the query of “my husband wants…” in India)

Searching for anything and everything. Source: Shutterstock

Liberty Living operations and sales director Paul Watson says the findings show students are “bursting with questions” and are turning to the Internet to search for “the answer to all sorts of weird and wonderful questions”.

To be fair, many top queries reflect a student body that is inquisitive about university life, such as “Will university change me?” and “Is Glasgow safe for students?” – totally valid questions expected from a respectable student with a keen intellect.

But for now, the focus is on the collective strangeness and bizarreness of the student body.

So here you go, our pick of the most baffling and hilarious questions students are asking online based on Liberty Living’s findings :