Google once again put Messi at the center of the digital conversation with a celebration visible from the search engine. When you write your name, an animation appears with a spinning ball, light blue and white confetti and the message “Top scorer in the history of the World Cup”, a gesture with which the company highlighted its new record in the World Cup.

It is an “Easter Egg”, that is, hidden content that Google activates punctually for events of great global relevance. The animation includes the option to repeat and share on platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, X, Gmail and Reddit.

The record that motivated the digital tribute

The origin of this initiative is in the match that Argentina played against Austria on the second date of Group J of the 2026 World Cup. In that match, Messi scored a double that led him to accumulate 18 goals in World Cups, surpassing the mark of German Miroslav Klose, who had closed his World Cup career with 16 goals in Brazil 2014.

With that result, Messi officially became the top scorer in the tournament's history, a mark that Klose had held for more than a decade. The Argentine player reached that figure in 28 games throughout his participation in different editions of the World Cup.

Millions of interactions in a few hours

Since Google activated the animation, interaction numbers have grown rapidly. The surprise accumulated more than 10 million views in its first hours of activation, with records indicating that nearly four million users actively repeated the animation.

Messi's relevance in search engines is not a new phenomenon. At Qatar 2022, Google's then CEO, Sundar Pichai, confirmed that the final between Argentina and France represented the highest traffic recorded in the search engine's 25-year history. The record in the 2026 World Cup once again positioned the player as one of the most searched topics on the platform globally.

Why does Google make these types of decisions?

Google Easter Eggs are not activated randomly. The company reserves them for anniversaries, historical events or figures that generate an unusually high search volume worldwide. The fact that the search engine has dedicated one of these resources to an active athlete reflects the cultural and digital weight that Messi maintains in the global conversation, beyond the strictly sporting field.

The animation is still active and can be seen by typing the player's name directly into the Google search engine from any device.