Interest in Donald Trump has now surpassed interest in Kamala Harris. People ate all the chocolate bars in Dubai. And the Yankees really won. All of these detailed insights come from a list of the year's top trending searches that Google released today.
Today, there's no arguing that Google is popular culture. It is the world's largest Internet property and the most visited site in Google searches. Indeed, the rise of Generative AI chatbots and social apps could someday erode Google's dominance. But for now, it reigns supreme, and these results are a kind of barometer of what the world is currently interested in.
We'll take a look at some of the results below, but first we'll explain a little more about what Google is measuring. First of all, these are not the most popular search terms in 2024. Google told me that if they created that list, the most popular things for the year would be words like “weather,” and they don't really change. , every year.
“Search Year” instead focuses on queries that spiked in popularity in 2024, specifically those that “saw a spike in traffic over a sustained period in 2024 compared to 2023.” The aim is to sift through perennial favorites like “weather” to determine what people were interested in over the past year and uncover the zeitgeist.
So if people (at least those who go online) have a collective mindset or curiosity, these tables will tell you how it's been this year.
Google told TechCrunch that the list was compiled solely from text-based searches on google.com. Does not include searches on other Google products such as YouTube. It also does not include queries that may have passed through the Gemini-generated AI chatbot. The only exception to all this is the list of trending “humming” searches. Google's tool to hum the latest earworm so you can figure out what it really is.
You have to wonder what these lists will look like in the future if current trends hold. A recent study (via eMarketer) found that younger Americans are moving away from using Google for online searches, with Gen Z being 25% less likely to use Google than Gen X. Ta. Instead, they prefer to search social media sites like TikTok. Trends, news and answers to questions they may have. Therefore, Google may start adding more data from YouTube in the future. This trend remains strong in the younger demos.
The rise of generative AI is no different. So far, OpenAI's ChatGPT appears to be the only bot to make it to the top 10 list of the world's most popular websites (according to SimilarWeb). That’s right, the same list that ranks Google searches at the top. Google has a valid and powerful card there. It already incorporates generative AI results into some search experiences and also offers them in standalone apps, giving the company the option to offer them as a supplement to basic search. experience. Complement > Cannibalism.
Top search trends around the world
These are fascinating. The main reason is that it highlights how much Google is used outside of the United States. The top search term in 2024 compared to 2023 was the soccer (football) tournament, Copa America. This will be followed by another soccer tournament, the UEFA European Championship. This was followed by two cricket sporting events, the ICC Men's T20 World Cup and one particular 'Test' between India and England. Overall, six of the top 10 trending terms were related to sporting events. (Olympics only placed ninth.) The first term on the list was One Direction singer Liam Payne, who passed away earlier this year, moving Donald Trump to fifth place. iPhone 16 and Duchess Kate round out the list.
Search (global)
1. Copa America
2. UEFA European Championship
3. ICC Men's T20 World Cup
4. India vs England
5. Liam Payne
6. Donald Trump
7. India vs Bangladesh
8.iPhone16
9. 2024 Paris Olympics
10. Catherine, Princess of Wales
Election insights
Are Google searches an interesting reflection of what's happening in the real world, or are they shaping what the real world ends up doing?Donald Trump won the US presidential election. , also outperformed her opponent Kamala Harris in Google searches. He is in the top 10 global search trends (Harris is not). He was the number 1 name on the global list of people search trends. (Kamala was third.) And his shooting even made it into the top 10 list of global news events. In the US-only trend, Trump similarly outperformed Harris.
Top news trends
Google announced that Israel/Gaza became the top news trend in 2023. There is plenty of evidence that this will not continue to rise sharply in 2024. Instead, this year the US election topped the list of news events, and the top 10 list also included the Olympics, Rafa, Iran and, oddly enough, Menendez. Natural weather disasters continued to permeate the list. And Crowdstrike's failure was such a mess that it made it into the top ten.
dubai chocolate bar
Google may intentionally ignore search trends on social platforms in its rankings, but it can't really avoid it. Dubai Chocolate Bar (a chocolate bar with a rich, crunchy pistachio/pastry filling) made it to multiple lists this year, including Top Food Recipes and Viral Foods in the World and the United States. but why?
It's TikTok's fault after all. The bar became a sensation after a food influencer from Dubai, where it was first created, posted about it and her TikTok video went viral. That eventually got out to a million other outlets, who started writing about it. A Google search trend is emerging.
Nancy Meyers and her various appearances
They say fashion inspiration can come from anywhere. And in 2024, it was from a middle-aged woman in a movie. Nancy Meyers has been a filmmaker since the early 1980s, but her real heyday was in the 1990s and early 2000s, when she made down-to-earth, funny, sentimental, and mostly feel-good comedies for the family. Movies like the remake made it big at the box office. The Parent Trap, the Father of the Bride, and What Women Want. Many of her films feature iconic female characters who are rich, if not filthy rich, and that status is embodied in the relaxed clothing they wear. Some of that is clearly starting to speak to women in the 2020s. Behold the rise of Coastal's Grandmother and her 2024 incarnation, Coastal's Granddaughter. This year, both Myers and her granddaughter landed on Google's trending list thanks to their promotion on social platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
Burnt toast and orange peel: No, these aren't food trends
We're a somewhat food-obsessed culture, so it may come as no surprise that the top two “Internet theories” trending in the U.S. in 2024 refer to food. Otherwise, they are actually completely unrelated. The burnt toast theory is a modern, more optimistic version of what has been variously described as fatalism or determinism in philosophy. All the little things in life, even the ones that seem like setbacks, are part of the bigger picture and happen. There's a reason. The orange peel theory is about how you can understand if someone cares about you. The theory goes that if you ask someone to peel an orange and they do it, you have a steward. Again, both of these started going viral on TikTok.