SNL Special Spurs Surge In Murder Searches On Google

Saturday Night Live's 50th Anniversary event over the weekend was a vibrant and star-studded celebration of the show's long history as a U.S. entertainment institution. And even with the celebratory nature of it all, actor Steve Martin's monologue to start the show seemed to spur a strong interest in something else: Murder.

Among his many jokes during the opening of the 50th anniversary special, Martin mentioned that it was surprising that "only" two of the show's hosts have ever committed murder. The comment led to a surge in searches on the topic, according to Google Trends data.

• "SNL Hosts Committed Murder" was by far the top related search in the last seven days, and Google data showed that "SNL hosts murder" and "Robert Blake" (one of the two alluded to by Martin) were the top breakout related topics.
• "SNL Murder" was the No. 3 murder-related search topic in the U.S. over the last seven days, only behind "murder mystery" and "murder drones."
• Despite the initial jump, the interest in the topic was relatively short-lived – Google data shows that searches peaked at 5 p.m. on Feb. 16, and dipped to almost non-existent by the end of that night.