Why did people google 'golden shower' more on 29 May 2016 than in the aftermath of watersportsgate?

The world has been shaken by allegations that Donald Trump hired prostitutes to perform a "golden shower" on the bed of the presidential suite in the Ritz Carlton Moscow.

It is no surprise that the number of people googling the phrase "golden shower" spiked in the hours after Buzzfeed first splashed the story on 10 January.

What was remarkable, however, is that recent search interest in the idiom was a mere drop in the ocean when compared with 29 May last year - scroll down to see the data.

That was the day that the Cassia Fistula was declared flower of the day by lifestyle blogger Judy Dykstra-Brown. The plant is more commonly known as the "golden shower tree."

The golden shower tree, native to India and south-east Asia, is notable for its ripply yellow flowers that flow effortlessly from the tree top. The term is more widely known as a euphemism for the act of urinating on a sexual partner.

On 11 January Buzzfeed published an unverified document that was allegedly compiled by a former British spy. It claims that Russian intelligence services have material that seriously "compromises" Trump. This is said to include footage of Trump watching prostitutes perform golden showers on a bed in the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Moscow.

Trump strongly denies that he took part in the act or that he was filmed doing so by Russian spies. Moscow has also dismissed the claims as "complete nonsense".

Google Trends data discloses the relative search interest in terms over time. It does not provide the actual total of number of googles directed towards a particular topic; instead it shows at what point in time a term was most searched and how search interest compared with this at other times.

In the case of "golden shower", there was a surge in interest in the topic after Buzzfeed published the alleged leak but this was drowned by interest between May 29 to June 4 when there were twice as many google searches for the phrase.

IBTimes UK has dug through internet archives to try to unearth the reason behind this phenomenon. Our best hypothesis is that it relates to the golden shower tree being awarded flower of the day on Dykstra-Brown's lifelessons blog.