Google Zeitgeist 2009

What have we been looking for?

On the global fastest rising topics list, Michael Jackson ranks on top, followed by Facebook. Tuenti - a Spanish social networking website, similar to Facebook - appears as third, and Twitter is next. Weird terms like sanalika (a virtual world from Turkey), dantri.com.vn (one of the top online newspaper in Vietnam) and torpedo gratis ("free SMS", in Portuguese) also appear on the global Top 10 list


By GABRIELA ZAGO (gabriela.zago@wavemagazine.net)
from Porto Alegre, BRAZIL


Every year Google announces its Zeitgeist, a list of the most searched terms in Google during a certain year. The 2009 list was announced on the beginning of December, and reveals some obvious searching trends - like Michael Jackson and Facebook on top of the list - and others not so obvious - like "torpedo gratis". The list is a good thermometer of how was the year that is about to end, at least by the optics of the searches people most did on Google.

Zeitgeist is a German word that means "spirit of the time". The term is widely used to refer to how a certain service behaves in a certain period of time. Google Zeitgeist 2009 shows search trends all over the world - there's a global list, as well as lists segmented by topic and by region.

How information is gathered

In order to compile the list, Google studied billions of queries people typed into Google search during the year. They use multiple sources for gathering that information, and information is then filtered out in order to remove spam.

Another interesting fact about the list is that it shows the fastest rising topics (most popular searches in the current year) and the fastest falling topics (those that were very popular on the 2008 list, but for some reason are losing popularity in 2009).

Global popular topics

On the global fastest rising topics list, Michael Jackson ranks on top, followed by Facebook. Tuenti - a Spanish social networking website, similar to Facebook - appears as third, and Twitter is next. Weird terms like sanalika (a virtual world from Turkey), dantri.com.vn (one of the top online newspaper in Vietnam) and torpedo gratis ("free SMS", in Portuguese) also appear on the global Top 10 list.

There are more detailed data on United States, such as most popular "how to" searches (by the way, the most popular ones were "how to kiss" and "how to draw"), or most popular searches on Google News ("swine flu" is on top of the list).

Brazilian popular topics

When we take a look at Brazilian trending topics, one interesting fact to note about the country is that people tend to use Google in order to recover popular websites addresses - instead of typing "Orkut.com", for example, people go to Google and search for "Orkut". That's why the first three most popular terms in Brazil were "Orkut", "Youtube" and "Hotmail" - it is also somehow a reflex of the most popular websites in the country. Orkut and Youtube also lead the entertainment list for Brazil. On the emerging topics for Brazil, Twitter appears in the first place.

Other search engines lists

Google is not alone on revealing its 2009 searching trends. About the same time, Bing also has released its list of most searched terms. On its lists, Michael Jackson appears first, followed by Twitter. Yahoo! also has its own 2009 trending list. On Yahoo! list, Michael Jackson ranks first, too, but it is followed by the Twilight Saga.

Apparently, 2009 has already ended, at least for search engines. One question that none of the lists answer is what happens with topics that are popular during December.


(Published: 18.12.2009.)