Brace yourselves: the year-end lists are coming. As 2012 comes to close, it’s vital that we all take a step back and review all of the inane crap we seek out on search engines. First up, it’s Bing with a nice comprehensive 2012 search overview.
Congratulations, Kim Kardashian. You’re the most-searched person of the year.
According to Bing, she beat out Justin Bieber, who held the title for 2011. The Biebs holds strong this year, coming in at #2. The rest of the top ten is as follows, in order: Miley Cyrus, Rihanna, Lindsay Lohan, Katy Perry, Selena Gomez, Jennifer Aniston, Nicki Minaj, and Taylor Swift. You may notice a few glaring omissions from that lists – notably Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, who happened to be running for the nation’s highest office this year. In our celeb-crazed culture, the President and his challenger only managed to break the top 50, coming in at 46th and 43rd, respectively.
As far as the most-searched news stories of the year, the iPhone 5 takes it down. The rest of the top ten looks like this: 2012 Elections, 2012 Olympics, Hurricane Sandy, Honey Boo Boo, Gangnam Style Dance, KONY 2012, Academy Awards, Kindle Fire HD, and Facebook IPO.
And when you look at social networks and apps, Facebook was the most popular search followed closely by Twitter. MySpace, which is soon launching a big redesign, came in third. Three of the top five app searches involved streaming music (Pandora, I Heart Radio, and Spotify).
When it comes to culture, there are no big surprises. PSY’s “Gangnam Style” was the most-searched song of 2012, followed by Carly Rae Jespen’s “Call Me Maybe” and Justin Bieber’s “Boyfriend.” The Avengers was the most-searched movie, followed by The Dark Knight Rises and Titanic.
Bing has a pretty substantial breakdown across many categories, including fashion, holiday icons, celeb couples, and more. You can check out their full report here.