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Google Zeitgeist: Here Are The Top Searches Of 2012

Chris Crum — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 14:55:33 +0000

It’s that time of year again. Google has updated its Zeitgeist site for 2012, looking at the most popular search trends of the year. The company has been doing this for 12 years.

Google has added some bells and whistles to the site that weren’t available in previous years. There is an interactive map showing search spike locations and times, for example.

Google is also launching Zeitgeist Android and iOS apps. The Android app will be available today, the company says, but does not specify when the iOS version will be ready.

Google says it has seen 1.2 trillion searches in 146 languages.

Here, Google reviews the year in under three minutes (video produced by Whirled):

“Global superstar Whitney Houston topped many countries’ lists as well as three of our overall trending lists—her unexpected death surprising fans around the world,” says SVP & Google Fellow Amit Singhal. “From Korea, YouTube sensation PSY’s ‘Gangnam Style’ signature dance took the world by storm, landing him the #1 spot in many countries and making his song the second most trending query of 2012. (PSY’s video became the #1 most watched in YouTube history—stay tuned for YouTube’s Rewind for more.)”

“Then there was the superhuman,” he adds. “Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner’s epic free fall jump made him the #6 globally trending person of the year, while the 2012 Olympics and its various athletes made it into almost every country’s top trends. And NBA player Jeremy Lin also rose on the charts this year, making him the #1 trending athlete globally.”

He also notes that web users took “a serious interest” in threats to the open Internet like SOPA and ACTA, which both appeared on many countries’ lists.

Now, let’s look at some of those lists.

The World’s Top Searches

1. Whitney Houston
2. Gangnam Style
3. Hurricane Sandy
4. iPad 3
5. Diablo 3
6. Kate Middleton
7. Olympics 2012
8. Amanda Todd
9. Michael Clarke Duncan
10. BBB12

The World’s Top Image Searches

1. One Direction
2. Selena Gomez
3. iPhone 5
4. Megan Fox
5. Rihanna
6. Justin Bieber
7. Harry Styles
8. Minecraft
9. Nicki Minaj
10. Katy Perry

The World’s Top Consumer Electronics Searches

1. iPad 3
2. Samsung Galaxy S3
3. iPad Mini
4. Nexus 7
5. Galaxy Note 2
6. Play Station
7. iPad 4
8. Microsoft Surface
9. Kindle Fire
10. Nokia Lumia 920

The World’s Top Google+ Hashtags

1. #SOPA
2. #Awesome
3. #Sandy
4. #IO12
5. #Curiosity
6. #Olympics
7. #SXSW
8. #Debate
9. #BlastFromThePast
10. #Eastwooding

Top Trending Events Of 2012

1. Hurricane Sandy
2. Presidential Election
3. Super Bowl
4. Olympics
5. UEFA Euro 2012
6. KONY Movement
7. SOPA Protest
8. Aurora Shooting
9. Trayvon Martin Case
10. Hurricane Isaac

Top Trending “What Is” Searches In The U.S.

1. What is SOPA
2. What is Scientology
3. What is KONY
4. What is Yolo
5. What is Instagram
6. What is Pinterest
7. What is Lent
8. What is Obamacare
9. What is iCloud
10. What is Planking

Top Searched Cities in Google Maps In the U.S>

1. San Francisco, CA
2. Chicago, IL
3. Denver, CO
4. Los Angeles, CA
5. New York, NY
6. Dallas, TX
7. Washington, DC
8. Houston, TX
9. Seattle, WA
10. Boston, MA

Top Searched Local Places In Google Maps

1. Hotel
2. Restaurant
3. Walmart
4. Apartment
5. Starbucks
6. Target
7. Parking
8. Bank
9. Camping
10. Home Depot

Top Trending Tech Gadgets In U.S.

1. iPad 3
2. iPad Mini
3. Samsung Galaxy S3
4. Kindle Fire
5. Nexus 7
6. Microsoft Surface
7. Galaxy Note 2
8. Samsung Galaxy S2
9. iPhone 5
10. Nokia Lumia 900

Top Trending Mobile/Tablet Apps In U.S.

1. Temple Run
2. Instagram
3. Google Play
4. Draw Something
5. Logo Quiz
6. Socialcam
7. Angry Birds Space
8. Pinterest
9. Amazon App
10. Facebook App

Top Google Doodles in U.S.

1. Soccer Doodle
2. Moog Doodle
3. Turing Doodle
4. Halloween Doodle
5. Nemo Doodle
6. Zipper Doodle
7. Valentine’s Day Doodle
8. Archery Doodle
9. Father’s Day Doodle
10. Faberge Doodle

There are plenty more lists where those came from. You can browse numerous countries across numerous categories, including News, Pop Culture, Fashion, Lifestyle, Science, Tech & Gadgets, Sports, Humanities and Cities.

Facebook also put out its top trends today.

Eric Schmidt Will Soon Send Robots To Parties To Represent Him

Chris Crum — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 21:14:58 +0000

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt spoke at the company’s Zeitgeist Americas 2012 conference this week. If you have sixteen minutes to spare, check it out below.

He speaks about how technology will shape the next five to ten years, and what this might mean for your children. He notes that people will still be using voice to text rather than texting while they’re in their driverless cars, because “they’ll never change the law”.

He also talks a bit about robots. “These robots will represent us and do gesture recognition. You’ll send your robot — I don’t like to stay out at night. I’ll send my robot out to go to the party and they can represent me.”

“You know, it’s much safer too,” he added. “He’ll have a good time, and he’ll report in the morning.”

There was plenty of laughter from the audience, but he added, “And you think I’m kidding. There are companies building these social robots right now, and they are uncannily powerful.”

Watch what Google CEO Larry Page had to say at the event here.

Larry Page Talks Social Signals In Search

Chris Crum — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 16:29:58 +0000

Google CEO Larry Page spoke this week at Zeitgeist Americas 2012. You can watch the whole video here. Towards the end of the nearly 40-minute talk, an audience member from the Google Science Fair asked him about social signals in search.

“I was wondering how you thought the role of emerging social media would impact the future search algorithms,” she said.

“I think it’s really important to know, again, who you’re with, what the community is – it’s really important to share things,” Page responded. “It’s really important to know the identity of people so you can share things and comment on things and improve the search ecosystem, you know, as you – as a real person…I think all those things are absolutely crucial.”

“That’s why we’ve worked so hard on Google+, on making [it] an important part of search,” he continued. “Again, like Maps, we don’t see that as like something that’s like a separate dimension that’s never going to play into search. When you search for things, you want to know the kinds of things your friends have looked at, or recommended, or wrote about, or shared. I think that’s just kind of an obvious thing.”

“So I think in general, if the Internet’s working well, the information that’s available is shared with lots of different people and different companies and turned into experiences that work well for everyone,” he said. “You know, Google’s gotten where it is by searching all the world’s information, not just a little bit of it, right? And in general, I think people have been motivated to get that information searchable, because then we deliver users to those people with information.”

“So in general, I think that’s the right way to run the Internet as a healthy ecosystem,” Page concluded. “I think social data is obviously important and useful for that. We’d love to make use of that every way we can.”

Of course Google is severely lacking access to a great amount of social data via the world’s biggest social network, Facebook (which recently surpassed a billion active users). Google is also doing more poorly in delivering realtime social data via Twitter, since the deal the two companies had previously, fell apart last year.

It will certainly be interesting to see what kind of progress Google is able to make in social search in the future, beyond the signals it is getting from Google+. Twitter actually made a move recently by launching a user profile directory, which some think may actually help increase the visibility of Twitter users in Google results.

Google is also experimenting with email, which some might consider to be the original online social media tool, in search results. Google expanded a field trial for Gmail results in web search results this week, even adding Google Drive and Google Calendar data to the mix.

Watch Google CEO Larry Page Speak At Zeitgeist Americas 2012 [Video]

Chris Crum — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 15:46:52 +0000

Google CEO Larry Page made his first public speaking appearance since dealing with some vocal cord issues that kept him from some company events this year. He spoke at Zeitgeist Americas on Tuesday, and talked about a number of things including potentially forthcoming antitrust regulation, Google’s privacy policy, which has come under fire in Europe, and Google Maps on iOS.

Here’s the full Q&A session with Page:

On Maps, he hinted that we’ll probably see Maps on iOS, though he would not acknowledge the platform by name.

On regulation, he says that overregulation is a big risk for Google. He also talks about how Google’s previous privacy policy would not have allowed certain integrations of its products.

We’re Not As Happy As We Used To Be, According To Our Tweets

Josh Wolford — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 18:41:28 +0000

According to our collective tweets, we are all unhappier than we used to be.

If you follow the types of people that I follow, your response might be “Duh.” Cynicism, anger, and even depression are the lifeblood of Twitter, right? It’s what makes the Twitterverse turn. But there has to be enough expression of joy and jubilation to counteract all of those negative Nancies, right?

Apparently, no. Our Twitter activity shows that we are all unhappier than we were just a few years ago. But let’s back up for a second. How did anyone possibly research this?

Individual happiness is a fundamental societal metric. Normally measured through self-report, happiness has often been indirectly characterized and overshadowed by more readily quantifiable economic indicators such as gross domestic product. Here, we examine expressions made on the online, global microblog and social networking service Twitter, uncovering and explaining temporal variations in happiness and information levels over timescales ranging from hours to years.

That’s pulled from the abstract of a University of Vermont study that was published this month in PloSONE. The team analyzed tweets for three years, combing through more than 46 billion individual words typed by over 63 million Twitter users around the world.

The 10,000 or so most common words spoken on Twitter were painstakingly rated by volunteers based on their level of “happiness” on a scale of one to nine. The researchers called these ratings the “emotional temperature,” and said that “like billions of moving atoms add up to the overall temperature of a room, billions of words used to express what people are feeling resolve into a view of the relative mood of large groups.”

For instance, the word “laughter” received a pretty high score of 8.5. A word like “truck” is neutral and got a score of 5.48. Negative words like “greed” received lower scores (3.06).

Because many tweets have location data and all of them have timestamps, the researchers were able to analyze patterns in “happiness” across the past three years.

According to the analyzed data, the happiest dates were Christmas Day 2008, 2009, and 2010. That was followed closely by Christmas Eve. Fourth of July (in America), Easter, and Thanksgiving were also relatively happy days. The only non-annual event that was a truly positive day outlier was the royal wedding in April of 2011.

Some of the most “unhappy” instances according to Twitter revolved around the U.S. bank bailouts, the Chilean miner incident, and the Japanese earthquake and subsequent tsunami.

But you can see the general decline. We are a sad, sad bunch.

Of course, this study is just taking into account Twitter users – so it could be that folks who use Twitter are getting down in the dumps. But Twitter is a fairly universal service nowadays. What do you think? Can the world’s happiness level be quantified using social media posts?

[I appreciate the level of detail given to the research. This is a gem:
One arguably false finding of a cultural event being negative was the finale of the last season of the highly rated television show ‘Lost’, marked by a drop in our time series on May 24, 2010, and in part due to the word ‘lost’ having a low happiness score of = 2.76, but also to an overall increase in negative words on that date.]

[Via PsychCentral]

Beyond Google Zeitgeist: A Lot Of Local Searching

Chris Crum — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 21:08:56 +0000

Google released its annual Zeitgeist this week. We covered this here, but here’s a video reminder:

Today, Google Director of Product Management Johanna Wright took to the official blog to point out how popular local searches have been. “Looking at these lists, I was surprised to see that, from city to city, almost all the terms across all the lists were related to local news, education, civic services or entertainment and activities,” she says. “I wanted to take a minute to take a deeper dive into these specific local trends that you won’t see published in Zeitgeist.”

These local trends?

“In nearly every single U.S. city we looked at, the top ten local terms showed that people were using Google to find local news stations and learn more about educational organizations,” she says. “Searches for school districts, universities and local libraries made the list in ten states, from the Hennepin County Library in Minneapolis, MN to the Chicago Public Library in Illinois.Pittsburgh, PA was the most media-hungry city in Zeitgeist this year, with all of their top 5 terms related to local news stations, while in New York City and Houston, TX, no news sources made the top ten lists.”

Another key trend was regional differences within states. 40% of terms for Orlando, FL, for example, were related to education, but in Miami, no education-related terms whatsoever made the list.

Other major trends seen in different cities included heavy searching for local civic services, local unemployment and job-related queries. Other local-related trends in heavy searching included lotteries, amusement parks, sports teams, etc.

The point Wright is trying to make, as best as I can tell, is that Google is an important tool for people looking for local information. I think that was pretty obvious already, but seeing the trends laid out does kind of emphasize this point.

Why do you think Google keeps making all of these local-related acquisitions? Recent examples would be Clever Sense and Zagat. This is another reason why a Google acquisition of Foursquare might not bee too far fetched.

Google Releases End-Of-Year Zeitgeist

Doug Caverly — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 16:09:30 +0000

Around the end of November and start of December, Bing and Yahoo released lists summing up the top searches of 2010. Now, a little closer to the end of the year, Google’s followed suit, and there’s plenty of data for people who are interested in that sort of thing.

A quick note: we’re going to stick to the U.S.-centric lists here. But there are lists pertaining to global trends, and also plenty more country-specific lists if you’d rather look those over.

As for the U.S. lists, you can see several of them below. Celebrate or despair as you please. Obviously, the iPad, Chatroulette, and the latest iPhone were all popular topics, along with more significant events like the Gulf oil spill and the earthquake in Haiti.

Somehow, the cast of "Jersey Shore," Kesha, and Justin Bieber attracted a lot of eyeballs, too, even as people also dedicated some time to tracking down less fleeting things like the World Cup, the Eiffel Tower, and Hearst Castle.

One last fact for data hounds: on the Official Google Blog, a post noted, "[W]e’ve added interactive HTML5 data visualizations for the top queries and events from around the world. You can easily compare the popularity of the Olympics vs. the World Cup, see the world’s reaction to Haitian earthquake or the Gulf Oil Spill through the eyes of search trends. With these new visualizations, you can interact with, explore and obsess over search data just the way we do."

Google Year-End Zeitgeist Published

Doug Caverly — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:57:15 +0000

Although 2009′s still one month short of being over, Google followed Bing and Yahoo this morning by identifying the year’s major search trends. Perhaps unsurprisingly, "Michael Jackson" was one of the most common terms, and interest in the 2008 Olympics waned.

Indeed, Michael Jackson topped Google’s "Fastest Rising (Global)" list, and showed up in the number two spot on the U.S. version. Meanwhile, Olympics-related terms took the first- and second-place positions on the global and U.S. "Fastest Falling" lists.

As for how everything else turned out, well, you can see for yourself below. It seems that Twitter, Facebook, and Lady Gaga were pretty much universally popular, while Heath Ledger, Barack Obama, and the Wii all received less attention this year than last.

Then here are a few notes in case some of the search terms are unfamiliar: Tuenti is often referred to as the Spanish version of Facebook. Sanalika looks to be a Turkish relative of Second Life. Dantri.com.vn is a Vietnamese news site, and Torpedo Gratis is a free SMS service offered in Brazil.

On the Official Google Blog, Marissa Mayer capped off the release of this data by stating, "It’s because of curious searchers like you, and the aggregation of billions of queries throughout the year, that our annual Zeitgeist has become an insightful look into a global mindset. So please explore the year to date on our Zeitgeist site, which showcases many of these interesting trends across various categories and countries, and more about how we came up with our lists. We’re already anticipating what searches in 2010 will illuminate!"

Related Articles:

> Yahoo Releases Top Searches Of 2009

> Death, Disease, Money, And Twitter On Bing

> The Definitions That People Didn’t Know In 2009

Google’s Global Zeitgeist – 2008 Edition

Chris Crum — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:03:35 +0000

Last week Google revealed the fastest growing search terms for the United States, which we looked at here. Now Google has released their year-end Zeitgeist, looking at a number of categories in (for the first time) over 30 different countries.

"So, what do we in this global village have in common?" asks Google VP Search Products and User Experience, Marissa Mayer. "Mainly a strong interest in socializing and politics. Social networks comprised four out of the top 10 global fastest-rising queries, while the U.S. election held everyone’s interest around the globe. Republican VP candidate, Sarah Palin, may have lost in the election, but she was the #1 fastest-rising query on our global list (Obama was #6)."

Let’s look at that global list:

   1. sarah palin
   2. beijing 2008
   3. facebook login
   4. tuenti
   5. heath ledger
   6. obama
   7. nasza klasa
   8. wer kennt wen
   9. euro 2008
10. jonas brothers

As far as the U.S. is concerned, Google provided the following information:

I would have expected the Jonas Brothers to make a top ten list here in the U.S where they are myesteriously absent., but I’m a little surprised to see them make it on a global scale. I apparently have a lot to learn about the Jonas Bros.

Google Reveals Fastest Growing Search Terms

Chris Crum — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 22:02:46 +0000

Yesterday, we looked at the top question searches on Ask for 2008, Dictionary.com’s Top Gainers of 2008, Ask’s Top Celebrity Baby Mamas of 2008, and Ask’s Top Deals & Steals Searches. We looked at the top mobile searches and the top viral videos. The new Google Holiday site looked at some popular searches on Google Product Search.

Perhaps you are asking, "But what about the fastest-rising search terms for 2008?" Well, Google has gone ahead and provided that info (for the U.S.). "We wanted to whet your appetite for our year-end Zeitgeist with this sneak peek of the fastest-rising search terms in the U.S. for 2008," says Google. "We combed through billions of anonymous, aggregated search queries to bring you this snapshot of what’s been top-of-mind for Americans in the past 11 months."

Compared to the previous year, the following ten search terms have seen the most growth according to the search giant:

1.    obama
2.    facebook
3.    att
4.    iphone
5.    youtube
6.    fox news
7.    palin
8.    beijing 2008
9.    david cook
10. surf the channel

That’s an interesting list. I don’t think number one is very surprising. Number five and ten compliment the growing trend in online video that I painstakingly documented here.

Google promises more top search lists when they release their 2008 Zeitgeist next week. I know that’s what you’re really waiting for. In the meantime, feel free to look at last year’s.