Google Celebrates Taylor Swift With ‘The Life of a Showgirl’ Search Page Easter Egg

MILAN, ITALY – JULY 13: Taylor Swift performs onstage during “Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour” at San Siro on July 13, 2024, in Milan, Italy. (Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management )

Getty Images for TAS Rights Management

If you Google “Taylor Swift,” you’re in for a showgirl-themed surprise this week.

Swift announced the coming of her 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl, on Tuesday. A day later, she talked about the upcoming album on a podcast hosted by Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce (better known in some quarters as Taylor Swift’s boyfriend, and we love that for him) and his brother, retired Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce.

Fans who turn to Google for more details about Swift and The Life of a Showgirl are being treated to a sparkly shower of orange confetti, followed by a flaming-heart image that floats up from the bottom of the screen with the words “And, baby, that’s show business for you.” When the confetti shower is over, an orange button at the bottom of the screen displays a counter (61.17 million as of about 1 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday). It’s not clear whether the counter represents the number of Google searches for Taylor Swift or the number of people who have clicked on the button.

Clicking the button triggers another digital confetti drop and makes little heart images float up from the counter, which lends some support to the notion that button-clicks are at least part of what’s being counted. (Your faithful correspondent is positively giddy to report that a well-timed click rolled the counter over from 61.17 million to 61.18 million; so much for the high school physics teacher who said I’d never amount to anything.)

A Long List of Ex-Searches

This isn’t the first time Google has given Taylor Swift fans an Easter egg; in September 2023, the launch of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) came complete with a series of word puzzles, which users had to work together to solve in order to unlock a “vault” of information about deleted tracks from the album. “Cause darling, we’re a Swiftie dressed like a search engine,” as Google put it.

Google’s search page Easter eggs have been a staple of internet culture since the early 2000s. One of the oldest and most famous is what happens when you search for “do a barrel roll.” No spoilers here.

Since then, Google has hosted Easter eggs for various holidays, sporting events and pop-culture events like movie and album releases. Searches for hip-hop duo Flyana Boss, heavy metal singer/songwriter Ozzy Osbourne and pop star Lady Gaga used to trigger their own themed Easter eggs, but Google has since discontinued them.

Other discontinued Easter eggs featured the movies It Follows, It (not to be confused with It Follows), and Wicked. That suggests that if you want to get your Swiftie confetti fix, you should get it soon — but unofficial website Elgoog keeps most of Google’s past Easter eggs alive on its archive (you could say that Google buries hatchets and Elgoog keeps maps of where it put ’em).

Plenty of Google’s own Easter eggs are still up and running, so if you’ve had your fill of confetti, or if you’re (gasp!) not a Swiftie, check these out searches:

• “Cat” or “dog” and click the paw print button (it shows up in different places), then randomly click around the page.
• “Drop bear” and click the warning sign.
• Type in a font name to change the search results to that font, or search “best font ever” for Google’s official opinion on the matter.

Pop Culture and Fandom

• “Brennan Lee Mulligan” and look for the blue heart with a counter; it’s a reference to a bit from the comedy game show Game Changer.
• “KPop Demon Hunters” and watch top of the page for a fandom inside joke.
• “The Last of Us” or “Cordyceps” and click the mushroom as many times as you want; now the outbreak is all your fault.
• “Paddington” and click the sandwich.

Science (Because That’s What We Do Here)

• “Aurora Borealis” and click the button.
• “Isaac Newton” and click the apple tree.
• “Meteor shower” and watch the animation.
• “Meteorite” or “Chicxulub” and watch the animation.
• “Solar eclipse” and watch the animation.