Digital News

What’s worse that being Googled?

As the year draws to a close so we are inundates with all manner of charts. While we may miss John Peel’s Festive Fifty there are plenty of options still available. From the top 100 Worst Movies of the Year, the Top Ten MP3 downloads to the Top Ten Most Depressed Hedge Fund Managers in Canary Wharf, the list is almost endless.

Not wishing to miss out on the festive fun every December, Google compiles its ‘Zeitgeist’ – a look at which search terms people are search for on Google most often, and the terms that are increasing or decreasing in frequency.

Always dynamic and revealing of the main trends and events in each given year the team at Google that compiles the annual Zeitgeist list from billions of search queries believe that it is rapidly becoming a barometer of the world's "curiosity and desires". This is the seventh year of the zeitgeist lists, compiled for more than 30 countries and offering just a glimpse of insight into consumer behaviour.

The big Google hitters each year largely tend to revolve around the modern obsession with celebrity and catastrophe- sometimes it’s difficult to tell the difference. Paris Hilton rode high in 2006 with Hurricane Katrina and Tsunami bossing the returns in 2005, Janet Jackson toping the pile that year after her infamous Super Bowl wardrobe mishap. Orlando Bloom’s Google popularity withering since 2004 when he was the male whose name was the most frequently requested.

So what’s the big news this year?

Well Sarah Palin and the Beijing Olympics scored big as did social networking sites which comprised four out of the top 10 global fastest-rising queries Facebook coming in fourth. The world economic downturn is healthily represented in the topical finance chart: icesave, hot uk deals and banks were the most searched for terms.

Good news too in the UK for Gordon Brown, cupcakes, Oasis and Leonard Cohen, clearly much loved and much sought when after it comes to Google. Bets are on for 2009.