The data represent the relative volume of search terms in Google containing the terms biodiversity, wildlife or nature, from Irish IP addresses.  The data were collated from http://trends.google.com/ using the terms biodiversity, wildlife and nature, defining the location as ‘Ireland’ and the date range from January 2010 to December 2020.  As search volume is continually increasing, the data are normalised on a scale 0-100 where 100 represents that term’s peak number of searches.  Therefore, the scale is does not convey absolute search volume, but a relative volume across the specified terms.  The data were collated post-January 2010 due to profound changes in internet usage in Ireland with the proliferation of internet access and social media which directly impacts relative trend data based on total search volume.

The most popular search term was ‘nature’ with a mean (± 95% CI) normalised search volume scale of 55.9 ± 1.7, compared to ‘biodiversity’ (6.7 ± 0.6) or ‘wildlife’ (38.7 ± 2.5). In terms of trends over time, ‘biodiversity’ and ‘nature’ showed positive trends, with ‘biodiversity’ being statistically significant and ‘wildlife’ remaining unchanged.  Spearman’s rank correlation r_s (used to show trends in a time series), n = 132, df = 130; biodiversity, r_s = 0.24, p < 0.01; wildlife, r_s = 0.024, p = 0.79; nature, r_s = 0.14, p = 0.12.