Have you ever Googled a cow?

The price of a cow. Yes, that’s what most Africans, including South Africans, have been Googling under the “How much does (name of product or object) cost” autocomplete search term, according to cost evaluating site Fixr.

Fixr recently created a map of the most Googled object and product prices around the world, with some very interesting results.

In South Africa’s case, lobola may be one of the reasons why ‘cow’ is the most Googled object price tag. Ask any African groom-to-be in our country about the price of lobola these days and you may find it’s almost high enough to build a small Nkandla-esque “firepool”. So it wouldn’t be unusual to find a groom turning to the internet to help him and his family budget and prepare for lobola negotiations.

‘Food’ and ‘wedding’ are fairly popular in parts of North Africa. The price of slaves being the most Googled object in Mauritania is probably not so surprising considering the fact that the North African country was the last in the world to abolish slavery in 1981 – almost 20% of its population are slaves, according to stats released in the last few years.

Globally, ‘beer, ‘prostitute’, ‘food’, ‘wedding’ and ‘funeral’ pop up the most.
And it’s probably no coincidence that China, the world’s biggest electronics manufacturer, is the only country where ‘electronics’ tops the most searched for object/product price tag.