Google’s annual run-down of Britain’s most popular and fastest rising searches always makes for a revealing list – the internet search engine calls the study “Zeitgeist” because it aims to capture the spirit of our age.
This year the royal wedding was fastest-rising but, tellingly, it doesn’t even make the top 10 most popular UK searches. That’s dominated by functional queries for Facebook, eBay, YouTube, Hotmail and, oddly, Google itself. When it comes to individuals, the same is true: Kim Kardashian, Victoria Beckham and Emma Watson are most popular, untouched by the fastest-rising people such as the late American TV star Ryan Dunn or singers Adele and Ed Sheeran.
The lists are not all about celebrities however: the fastest-rising question beginning with “What is…” was “What is AV?” – buoyed by the massive interest around the time of the referendum. As AV beat “scampi” in that category, however, the new report also indicates something about the weirdness of the web. Nick Clegg was the UK’s fastest faller.
Google says it reveals the web’s trends “through an exploration of the billions of search queries we receive each year. In addition to the year-end Zeitgeist, which highlights the top trends of 2011, we have several tools that give insight into global, regional, past and present search trends.” What do these results really tell us about the spirit of the internet age? Top in food and drink is Asda, which claims to be the cheapest supermarket, and the top travel destination is Las Vegas. These results tell us something about our straitened times.
Elsewhere the top tickets are train tickets and cheap flights are the top search under “cheap”. It would be easy to suggest that the aim to escape bleak times is the overarching theme: The X Factor is again the fastest-rising TV programme.
Other top queries included “how to revise”, which came just above “how to snog”, but the fastest-rising results are more instructive. “Haye vs Klitschko” may have been the fastest-rising sports term this year, but it outstripped the Olympics only because it hardly existed last year. Similarly, FC Anzhi Makhachkala rocketed up the list because the Russian club was given to a billionaire by the president of Dagestan, rather than its sporting prowess. While we can glean much from an annual survey, it probably tells us more about the vicissitudes of the web than it does about modern Britain.
See the full list of top web searches of 2011
