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What Do These Top 10 Google Searches of 2012 Say About the Past Year?

Dec. 12, 2012 5:45pm Liz Klimas

LOS ANGELES (TheBlaze/AP) — It’s that time again when year-end lists of everything from tweets to inventions circulate, giving a picture of what mattered most in various markets throughout 2012. But what do the collective searches on the world’s most popular search engine — Google — say about the year?

The world’s attention wavered between the tragic and the silly in 2012, and along the way, Web surfers searched in huge numbers to find out about a royal princess, the latest iPad and a record-breaking skydiver.

Whitney Houston was the “top trending” search of the year, according to Google Inc.’s year-end “zeitgeist” report. Google’s 12th annual roundup is “an in-depth look at the spirit of the times as seen through the billions of searches on Google over the past year,” the company said in a blog post Wednesday.

Googles Zeitgeist Report Reveals 2012s Top Searches

(Image: InsideSearch.blogspot.com)

People around the globe searched en masse for news about Houston’s accidental drowning in a bathtub just before she was to perform at a pre-Grammy Awards party in February.

Google defines topics as “trending” when they garner a high amount of traffic over a sustained period of time. Watch this video of Zeitgeist’s year in review:

Korean rapper PSY’s “Gangnam Style” music video trotted into second spot, a testament to his self-deprecating giddy-up dance move. The video is approaching a billion views on YouTube.

Superstorm Sandy, the damaging storm that knocked out power and flooded parts of the East Coast in the midst of a U.S. presidential campaign, was third.

Here’s a look at the full top searches list:

Whitney Houston

(Photo: AP/Joel Ryan, File)

Gangnam Style

(Photo: AP/Yonhap, Bae Jung-hyun)

Hurricane Sandy

Waves crash onto the sea wall protecting homes in Longport, N.J., on Oct. 28. (Photo: AP/Joseph Kaczmarek)

iPad 3

Customers wait for an Apple store to open where the new “iPad mini”. (Photo: PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images)

Diablo 3

Diablo III is a video game. (Image: Wikimedia)

Kate Middleton

Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, recently announced she was pregnant. (Photo: AP/Arthur Edwards, Pool)

Olympics 2012

Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. (Photo: AP/Morry Gash, Pool, File)

Amanda Todd

A young girl holds a pink candle during a memorial honoring teen Amanda Todd in Maple Ridge, B.C., Monday, Oct. 15. Todd who was a victim of bullying took her own life. (Photo: AP/The Canadian Press, Jonathan Hayward)

Michael Clarke Duncan

Actor Michael Clarke Duncan, who died this year, pictured with his fiance Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth in Feb. 2012. (Photo: David Livingston/Getty Images)

BBB12 (Big Brother Brazil 2012)

(Image: Wikimedia)

But search isn’t the only trending topics curated in the Zeitgeist list. It covers these categories as well:

(Image: Zeitgeist)

Some trending people, according to Google, were:

- Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian skydiver who became the first to break the sound barrier without a vehicle with a 24-mile plummet from Earth’s stratosphere;

- Jeremy Lin, the undrafted NBA star who exploded off the New York Knicks bench and sparked a wave of “Linsanity”;

- Morgan Freeman, the actor whose untimely death turned out not to be true.

The Internet also continued its rise as a popular tool for spreading addictive ideas and phrases known as “memes.” Remember LOL? If you don’t know what it means by now, someone may “Laugh Out Loud” at you.

This year, Facebook said its top memes included “TBH (To Be Honest),” `’YOLO (You Only Live Once),” `’SMH (Shake My Head).” Thanks to an endlessly fascinating U.S. presidential campaign, “Big Bird” made the list after Republican candidate Mitt Romney said he might consider cutting some funds for public broadcasting.

Yahoo said its own top-searched memes for the year included “Kony 2012,” a reference to the short film and campaign against Ugandan militia leader Joseph Kony; “stingray photobomb” for an unusual vacation snapshot that went viral; and “binders full of women,” another nod to Romney for his awkward description of his search for women cabinet members as Massachusetts’ governor.

And people were happy to pass on popular Twitter posts by retweeting them. According to Twitter, the year’s most popular retweets were President Barack Obama’s “Four more years,” and Justin Bieber’s farewell to six-year-old fan Avalanna Routh, who died of a rare form of brain cancer: “RIP Avalanna. i love you”.

In CONTROL, Glenn Beck presents a passionate, fact-based case for guns that reveals why gun control isn’t really about controlling guns at all; it’s about controlling us. Find out more HERE.

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Comments (30)

stumpy68
Posted on December 12, 2012 at 11:43pm
Google sanitizes its lists if p-o-r-n isnt no 1 someone is lying.

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- sillyfreshness
  Posted on December 14, 2012 at 3:03am
  LOL good point. I saw Norodom Sihanouk as one of their big search hits. Really? I never heard of the guy and his death wasn’t in the news at all. I think Google wants to “globalize” their results to appear to all the 3rd world nations. They really praised the Al Qaeda uprising in the Middle East in this video too, so you can tell this is biased. They played it off as democracy at work.
  
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stumpy68
Posted on December 12, 2012 at 11:42pm
Google sanitizes its lists if porn isnt no 1 someone is lying.

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universalphilos
Posted on December 12, 2012 at 10:10pm
Why do we not search for God?

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- grayling646
  Posted on December 12, 2012 at 11:20pm
  I just did a Google search. He’s not there.
  
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- Rationed_Rationale
  Posted on December 24, 2012 at 5:09am
  Tip: he’s in our hearts. No need to search.
  
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Chet Hempstead
Posted on December 12, 2012 at 8:16pm
This list is already out of date as of today when every man in the country hit the net trying to find an uncensored copy of the Anne Hathaway picture.

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Tigress1
Posted on December 12, 2012 at 7:27pm
Just sad. This is why we have Obama as President. A nation of big dummies. (and election fraud) However, I must confess that I did look up “Gangnam Style”. Maybe based on the concept of S. Korea trying to get the video of “Gangam Style” getting the most views in history, we can start a trend of getting people to look up “Agenda 21″?

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- Pantloadian
  Posted on December 13, 2012 at 10:30am
  Yes, yes . . . good idea. (Your check for $.21 is in the mail.)
  
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kleindropper
Posted on December 12, 2012 at 7:15pm
Apparently 12 year old girls are the only ones doing Google searches these days. This is very similar to the demo that is still going to movies in the theater and still buying music.

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SaturdaysWarrior76
Posted on December 12, 2012 at 6:48pm
Truly pathetic.. while the rest of us were desperately searching out George Soros, progressivism, obama’s childhood, Benghazi, Fiscal Cliff, etc.
Whitney Houston and Honey Boo Boo are beating us…
As Charlie Brown would say: AAAAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!

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psadie
Posted on December 12, 2012 at 6:20pm
What it says is that Americans cannot handle the truth and don’t want to understand what is really happening because they can’t cope with it. Instead, they go to silly things that are an escape from the frightening reality of life.

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- Rationed_Rationale
  Posted on December 24, 2012 at 5:10am
  Or maybe they live in a first world country that affords them free time to blow off steam and search for whatever they want to occupy themselves.
  
  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy…
  
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MrButcher
Posted on December 12, 2012 at 6:04pm
It says we have a vapid and rapidly crumbling culture full of idiots, halfwits and bed-wetters.

The future is bright.

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- trolltrainer
  Posted on December 12, 2012 at 7:03pm
  Hey, Mr. Butcher.
  
  Yep…
  
  Report this comment
- OBUMAURMAMA
  Posted on December 16, 2012 at 8:57pm
  You hit the nail on the head.
  
  Report this comment
Rothbardian_in_the_Cleve
Posted on December 12, 2012 at 6:02pm
“What Do These Top 10 Google Searches of 2012 Say About the Past Year?” —

Options might be:
1. Humanity is doomed, because we are a bunch of mush brained, mindless sheep.
2. Meh, I got nothing else…see #1.

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- OhioRifleman
  Posted on December 12, 2012 at 6:36pm
  Unfortunately, humanity is not doomed. Our country is doomed, the bulk of the mush heads are doomed, but humanity itself is not doomed.
  
  All we can hope is that what comes out on the other side is on the level.
  
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- rsanchez1
  Posted on December 12, 2012 at 10:05pm
  What comes out on the other side is always on the level. You would have thought that with the freest, most technologically advanced civilization to have ever developed in human history, we could have averted the cycle of rise and fall that have been characteristic of every major civilization in history, but unfortunately our country also went mush-brained.
  
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LeadNotFollow
Posted on December 12, 2012 at 6:02pm
I would have guessed that the top search would have been “Is Obama the antichrist?”

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- CanadaRocks
  Posted on December 12, 2012 at 6:10pm
  Hahaha. So true. It might also have been “why is romney such an idiot”
- Fubared
  Posted on December 12, 2012 at 7:18pm
  Cannuck
  One was a self made millionaire that donates to oodles of charities. The other worked for the Chicago Climate Exchange, and was dis-barred, meaning he cannot practice law in the state of his passing the bar. You mush heads clearly have a difference of opinion than the rest of us. Glad we have been downgraded as a nation, and our debt increases by the minute, and you know oh so much about bidness to know the difference.
  
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- FISH_BONE
  Posted on December 12, 2012 at 7:48pm
  Canada: As my neighbor to the north, I wish I could send my dog over to poop in your yard.
  
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- OBUMAURMAMA
  Posted on December 16, 2012 at 9:01pm
  @CanadaRocks
  Must be nice to be from a country that has to suck up it’s neighbors’ medical because their own is so screwed up.
  
  Report this comment
- Rationed_Rationale
  Posted on December 24, 2012 at 5:14am
  @OBUMAURMAMA
  
  He doesn’t like your candidate of choice so you trash his whole country.
  
  *slow clap*
  
  Report this comment
Stoic one
Posted on December 12, 2012 at 5:59pm
I noticed climate change/global warming IS NOT there….

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Psychosis
Posted on December 12, 2012 at 5:57pm
w houston is dead ???

much like the rest of the list …………………DONT CARE

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Keyser_Soze
Posted on December 12, 2012 at 5:57pm
I am surprised that Michael Clarke Duncan was there but I love his acting!

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- LeadNotFollow
  Posted on December 12, 2012 at 6:33pm
  The only reason he made the list was due to his unexpected death.
  Same with Whitney Houston.
  
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- rsanchez1
  Posted on December 12, 2012 at 10:03pm
  I still can’t watch The Island. Has that scene with Michael Clarke Duncan.
  
  I WANNA LIVE
  
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