Google has been revealing illuminating statistics that their properties managed to collect over the year for quite some time now. The latest list they published is a list of top trending searches for the year 2018. This list includes quite a few shocking revelations. For example, most of the searches in the top ten were for people that died during the year. This includes XXXTentacion, Mac Miller, Kate Spade, Stephen Hawking and, of course, the most recent as well as perhaps the most prominent individual to have died, the comic book legend that was Stan Lee.
It seems like controversy is one of the biggest factors that can affect something’s presence on the top trending list. Justice Kavanaugh, Logan Paul as well as a variety of other controversial figures made it to the list. The list also shows that the US does not have as big of a control over culture as it used to. The 2018 Football World Cup in Russia was more popular in other parts of the world, but it still managed to get trending.
Related: How to Find Almost Anything on Google [infographic]
"As each year closes, Google Trends data reflects not only these everyday queries, but also the moments, people, ideas, and questions that made that trip around the sun so unique.", said Simon Rogers, Data Editor at Google News Lab in a blog post. Adding further, "During a year of highs and lows, the Year in Search highlights all the ways people continued to search for “good”—and this year, it was more than ever."One thing that you should keep in mind is the manner in which Google ascertains which queries were the most relevant for a certain period of time. The total number of searches is actually not the statistic that Google uses to calculate such a thing. Instead, it looks at the increase between the number of times it was searched last year and the number of times it was searched this year. This is because of the fact that the list tries to ascertain the top trending searches, and a sudden boost in interest would mean that a topic is trending. Total volume of searches would probably bring something mundane to the top because of the fact that people use Google for all kinds of boring questions.
It seems like controversy is one of the biggest factors that can affect something’s presence on the top trending list. Justice Kavanaugh, Logan Paul as well as a variety of other controversial figures made it to the list. The list also shows that the US does not have as big of a control over culture as it used to. The 2018 Football World Cup in Russia was more popular in other parts of the world, but it still managed to get trending.
Related: How to Find Almost Anything on Google [infographic]
