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Twice a year we change the clocks. At 2am on Sunday 25 October in the UK and Ireland, they go back an hour to 1am. Your phone does it for you. But what do you still have to change by hand, and what do people search for most? To find out, we looked at a year of Google searches in the UK about setting the time on devices.
The answer is clear: the watch. Last October there were around 184,000 searches about setting the time on a watch, compared with around 78,000 for the oven. That is more than twice as many.
We also set the UK against fifteen other European countries, where it comes tenth per head, and found that searches for when and which way the clocks go have grown 80% in three years, even though in autumn they always go back.
Timo Klinge
Chief Entertainment Officer
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Smartwatch searches are high, but mostly flat. People search for help with their Apple Watch all year round, with no rise around the clock change, because it updates itself. The microwave adds around 11,000 searches.
Looking at each brand’s most-searched query, Bosch ovens and Casio watches lead (3,600 each in October), followed by G-Shock (“change g shock time”, 1,900), Neff and Panasonic (1,600 each).
These brands lead mainly because so many people own one. A much-searched brand is above all a widely owned brand. It doesn’t mean a Casio or a Bosch oven is harder to set than any other.
Some searches are steady all year; others shoot up when the clocks change. The sharpest riser is “how to change the clock on a zanussi oven”: 140 searches in October, 9.3 times as many as in a normal month. Lamona ovens rise too (“how to change clock on lamona oven”, 110, 7.8 times). Both are small numbers, but sharp jumps.
On a digital watch, setting the time hides behind a button combination you only need twice a year. Luxury watches such as Rolex are searched too (around 1,000 times in October), but those searches barely rise around the clock change. Even so, a fine movement deserves a little care.
“On a mechanical watch, it’s best to move the time forward rather than back. A movement is designed to run in one direction, and while modern movements cope with it fine, winding forward is simply the careful choice. Also take care if your watch shows the date or day: don’t change the time between roughly 7pm and 6am, because in that window the date mechanism is engaged and you could put it under unnecessary strain,” says Timo Klinge, CEO of Wristler.
The clocks go back in autumn, yet “when do clocks go forward” was searched 90,500 times last October, nearly twice as often as in a normal month. The right question is still asked far more often: “when do clocks go back” had 673,000 searches.
What stands out is the trend. The four main searches on when and which way the clocks go (“when do clocks go back”, “do clocks go back tonight”, “when do clocks go forward” and “do clocks go forward or back”) rose from 530,200 in October 2022 to 955,600 last October, up 80%. All clock-change searches grew by 39% in the same period, so these questions now make up half of all clock-change searches.
“Do clocks go back tonight” was searched 165,000 times last October, and “what time do the clocks go back” 246,000 times. In the clock-change months both are well over a hundred times as common as in a normal month. The rhyme to remember: spring forward, fall back.
Per head of population, Italy searches the clock change most, followed by the Netherlands and Finland. The UK is tenth of sixteen countries, with 2,743 searches per 100,000 inhabitants last October.
Zoom out and the clock change is a continental habit with national extremes. Per head of population, Italy, the Netherlands and Finland search it most, while Belgium and Norway search it least, with Norway at the very bottom of the sixteen countries measured. The sharpest swings, though, are seasonal rather than national: in Finland, searches around the change run more than twenty-five times a normal month (25.7×), the biggest spike anywhere, with Italy, Germany and the Netherlands close behind. Some nations are simply more clock-curious than others, but almost everywhere the question arrives in a rush twice a year.
For this research, Wristler analysed search volumes from Google Keyword Planner in the UK from September 2025 to August 2026, for searches about setting the time on watches, ovens, microwaves, cars and smartwatches. Figures are Google’s rounded estimates. Totals per device are deduplicated: the same search in a different word order counts once. The rise compares the average of the clock-change months (March and October) with the average of the other ten months. Searches show demand for information, not behaviour. The figures describe searches around the clock changes of the past year, not the upcoming change. Method and data are available on request.
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