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Google Search Traffic Peaked After Argentina's World Cup Win Over Egypt

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Google Search Traffic Peaked After Argentina's World Cup Win Over Egypt

Alphabet's (GOOG, GOOGL) Google recorded unprecedented search engagement after Argentina defeated Egypt in a knockout FIFA World Cup game on Tuesday.

Argentina scored three goals toward the end of the game to clinch a 3-2 win against Egypt, which remained two goals ahead until the 79th minute. Argentina's Enzo Fernandez scored the winning goal in added time.

"Google Search broke all prior usage records and saw its highest usage in history right after Argentina scored their winning goal," Nick Fox, senior vice president of knowledge and information at Google, said in an X post on Wednesday.

Alphabet's class C shares were down 2.2% in Thursday trading, and are up nearly 12% so far this year. The class A stock was down 2.3%.

"We saw the most queries per second happen right after the winning goal," a company spokesperson told CNBC. The top searched query was "argentina vs egypt," CNBC reported, citing Google.

Google didn't respond to' email seeking additional details.

Prediction market volume topped $50 billion in June, a new high, driven by increased interest in the World Cup, Macquarie said in a note earlier this week. The tournament helped push the industry to an annualized pace of more than $500 billion, with sports accounting for nearly half of all prediction market volumes.

Kalshi, a prediction market platform, captured a 65% market share of June volume, Macquarie said.

Price: $350.54, Change: $-8.17, Percent Change: -2.28%

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