Taking out pornography, the most popular search terms entered into Google during the course of this year reflected national events and hot news topics, and there were interesting variations according to different countries. The BBC has reviewed the search terms selected by the world’s population, and here the top ten terms are:
Google global trending searches of 2016:
1. Pokemon Go
2. iPhone 7
3. Donald Trump
4. Prince
5. Powerball
6. David Bowie
7. Deadpool
8. Olympics
9. Slither.io
10. Suicide Squad
The global search words have been analyzed by Time magazine for the U.S. Here the most searched word was “Powerball,” which references a record lottery payout. The reason it is so highly ranked is because of a $1.56 billion jackpot that was on offer at the start of 2016. In second place was “Prince,” relating to the artist who died earlier this year; this was followed by “Hurricane Matthew,” “Pokémon Go” and “Slither.io”. Later down the list came “Trump” (the ‘Donald’ not being necessary) and “Hillary Clinton” came in eighth (the latter ranking perhaps reflecting Trump’s narrow election win).
The U.S. top ten search terms were:
1. Powerball
2. Prince
3. Hurricane Matthew
4. Pokémon Go
5. Slither.io
6. Olympics
7. David Bowie
8. Trump
9. Election
10. Hillary Clinton
Wired has undertaken a similar analysis of the typical U.K. Google user. Here there were clear regional differences. In London, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool and Bradford the most popular question asked as “What is Pokémon Go?” Belfast, somewhat bizarrely, had the top question “What is the Internet?”; and in Cardiff the top what if question was “Brexit” and, similarly, in the city of Sheffield it was “What is Article 50?” (these latter two questions relating to the U.K. vote about leaving the European Union).
Across the U.K. as a whole, the top ten searches were:
1. Euro2016
2. Pokémon Go
3. David Bowie
4. Donald Trump
5. Prince
6. EU referendum
7. Alan Rickman
8. Olympics
9. US election
10. Deadpool
In related news a new report from computer scientists explains how the Internet of Things will affect search engines and other aspects of the on-line experience.
