We’re nearing the end of 2016 (good riddance), and that means that everyone who collects extensive, more-than-a-little-creepy data about our habits is putting together their year-end lists. While social media may be huge, Google is still a force to be reckoned with in terms of how users experience the Internet, and a few things dominated the site’s search results this year.
The number one worldwide search this year, according to Google’s lists, was Pokémon GO. The mobile game drowned out everything else in worldwide interest in 2016, which I can’t imagine was an easy feat this year. Unsurprisingly, search interest in the game peaked massively in July and then dropped way down in mid August, though it’s currently on a bit of an upswing.
It didn’t hit the number one spot in the United States, though, coming in at number 4—while Donald Trump, who was third on the worldwide list, was absent (along with anything else related to politics) from the U.S. top-five list entirely. For news-specific searches, the U.S. election took the number one spot worldwide, but the number two spot on the U.S. list, behind the Olympics. Clearly, our priorities were in order.
Stranger Things nabbed the top spot for TV shows both in the U.S. and around the world, while iPhones took 3 of the top 5 spots in tech inside our country and out, as well—with smartphones taking up the entirety of the worldwide top-five tech list and the Nintendo Switch making number 5 in the U.S. Google’s got even more extensive data on U.S.-specific searches broken down by category if you’re curious, with headings ranging from GIFs to “how to” queries.
The top for that category was, of course, “How to play Pokémon GO,” which we’re all still kind of arguing over, I think. Happy 2017!
(via Google, image via Netflix)
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