Google, Facebook, Twitter and other social media trends influence cryptocurrency price. No doubt, most traders trade according to the sentiments in the market, of which these advertising platforms play a central part.
As counter indicator perhaps. No one buys X coin because a bunch of noobs there are hyped up about it.
The price kept going up till CNBC started reporting about Bitcoin and they even brought back their BTC/USD ticker. CNBC hosts are the perfect reflection of how average joes think, so based on that it doesn't surprise me that they are wrong 9 out of 10 times with their timing. All their past altcoin bets were wrong as well.
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It's always price action -> surge in searches. It doesn't happen only when the price goes up. When there has been a massive decline in the price people search why Bitcoin is going down, whether or not it's dead, etc. This doesn't means anything on its own. I'm sure that most of these people don't end up buying or selling at all.