Trending: ‘fracking’

Lookups spiked 55,000% on October 7, 2020

Why are people looking up fracking?

Fracking was among our top lookups during the Vice-Presidential debate, after Mike Pence alleged that Joe Biden was planning on banning this practice.

Pence said Biden would "ban fracking." Biden's plan will not permit new fracking on federal land - but there is no ban in the plan. Most fracking is done on private or state-owned land. https://t.co/sL8EFjBZ2V #VPDebate
— FactCheck.org (@factcheckdotorg) October 8, 2020

What does fracking mean?

Fracking is defined as “the injection of fluid into shale beds at high pressure in order to free up petroleum resources (such as oil or natural gas).” The word comes from the shortening and alteration of (hydraulic) and fracturing. Hydraulic fracturing is a technique in which a liquid is injected under high pressure into a well in order to create tiny fissures in the rock deep beneath the earth which then allow gas and oil to flow into the well.

Trend Watch is a data-driven report on words people are looking up at much higher search rates than normal. While most trends can be traced back to the news or popular culture, our focus is on the lookup data rather than the events themselves.