Google’s annual round-up of search statistics, Zeitgeist, is out. So what did people care about most this year when it came to internet searches?
Google sorts through billions of searches in order to find the year’s 10 fastest-rising global queries. As ever, a lot of them make sense — some of them less so. But enough suspense-building.
Top of the list of Google searches this year was: Rebecca Black. Yep, you read that right. The talentless little pop songstress is what the US cares about most in 2011.
Reading down the list, Google must be upset to see that everyone had to search for their new social networking site, Google+, in order to work out what the hell it was. In fact, enough people had to search for it that it grabbed the number two spot.
In third? Ryan Dunn. No, we’re not quite sure how that happened either. Elsewhere in the Top 10, Battlefield 3, the iPhone 5 (which, err, isn’t actually, you know, real) and the Fukushima disaster all beat Steve Jobs — who was searched enough to claim ninth spot. Bringing up the rear was Jobs’ own device, the iPad2.
In order, the Top 10 runs:
1. Rebecca Black
2. Google+
3. Ryan Dunn
4. Casey Anthony
5. Battlefield 3
6. iPhone 5
7. Adele
8. 東京 電力 (Fukushima I Plant)
9. Steve Jobs
10. iPad2
Google does, of course, drill much deeper with its stats, breaking the results down by country, category, and even the fastest falling — which is, amusingly, topped by MySpace. And even if Amazon is cagey about their sales, Google at least proves that the Kindle Fire was the fastest rising piece of consumer tech, at least in terms of search results.
We’ll run a deeper analysis of the results later today, so make sure to check back. [Google Zeitgeist]