The fact MasterClass ranks first in Google for "what is a shallot?" is pretty surprising.
No more surprising than this MasterClass ad from the nytimes. We know companies hire PR firms to get their products in articles/ads in newspapers and favorable "SEO" rankings.
- maybe many people who don't know what a shallot is would drop $80 for a Ramsay masterclass (kind of like how Gyms primarily profit from non-users).
- that many people who search for "what is a shallot" in fact do already know what a shallot is and are interested in gaining advanced/deeper information about the subject.
Obviously it's regional, but from my UK perspective shallots are not exotic.
I'm not aware that they even suffer from multiple names as do spring/salad/green onions/scallions. Echalions of course, but that's a subcategory.
If shallots are unfamiliar, again, UK, you've spent little time even in supermarket vegetable aisles or restaurants and, surely, are therefore unlikely to actually part with cash a cooking class?
I'm not sure I'd go that far. Shallots can also be confused with scallops. (They're not similar things, but they are similar names.)
I think it's more likely that it means you're trying to read a menu, really.