PSS International Removals Blog: Dramatic increase in people searching on Google to move overseas following the UK election result

Brits are looking to move to Scotland, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Canada following the Conversative election victory, but few show interest in the United States

The number of people in the UK searching on Google for various phrases around moving abroad has dramatically increased in the hours after it became clear that the Conservatives had a won a majority in the House of Commons.

Similar patterns of search behaviour were seen following the original Brexit referendum result and also in the USA following Donald Trump’s controversial election victory.

There had been talk of a hung parliament in the run up to Election Day, but in the end, Boris Johnson and the Conservative party won the biggest majority since Margaret Thatcher.

But not everyone was happy about the prospect of Brexit finally going ahead and many people took to Google to look at various options of moving overseas with search terms such as “move abroad”, “leave UK” and “move overseas” all seeing a sudden surge.

It was also interesting to see the countries that people were looking to move to. “Move to Scotland” saw the biggest increase as well as other countries closer to home with “move to Europe”, “move to Spain” and “move to France” all showing sharp increases.

Many people were also looking to move further afield, including popular destinations for British migrants, with a big increase for “move to Australia”, “move to New Zealand” and “move to Canada”.

One country that did not see an uplift was the USA which had about the same number of searches as before the election.

At PSS International Removals we have continued to see large numbers of Brits looking to pursue a new life overseas and not many seem to have been put off by Brexit. In fact, the various Brexit deadlines seem to have had little effect even on those looking to move to Europe, so we are confident that British people will still be planning to move to the Mediterranean sun long after the Brexit negotiations have finally been concluded.

The following graphs for search trends over the past 7 days were sourced using the Google trends tool.