Over the past seven days, South Africans took to Google to test out Reddit’s gaming of the term “idiot”; a new pre-season local football clash; and a famous singer fighting the spectre of addiction.
It’s not often that a derogatory term top trends on Google, but on Thursday “idiot” (20 000+ searches) did exactly that. That the term got the traction it did is largely down to Reddit users working hard to ensure that images of US president Donald Trump cropped up every time someone searched for the word.
On Friday, meanwhile, South Africa’s second test match against Sri Lanka (Sl vs SA) was the top trending term with 20 000+ searches. Initially, the match appeared to be going South Africa’s way as spinner Keshav Maharaj took nine wickets in the first innings. The Proteas’ batting let them down, however, resulting in a massive win for the islanders.
Over the weekend, “Chiefs vs Sundowns” (50 000+ searches) took top spot as the two South African football giants faced each other in the inaugural Shell Helix Ultra Cup. On the day, Sundowns claimed a 2-1 victory over Kaizer Chiefs, thanks to goals from Jeremy Brockie and Themba Zwane.
Football again dominated on Sunday as “Liverpool vs Dortmund” (20 000+ searches). The pre-season friendly saw the German team claim a 3-1 victory over the English giants.
On Tuesday “Demi Lovato” saw more than 20 000 searches as the singer was rushed to the emergency room following an apparent drug overdose. Lovato, who has always been open about her struggles with addiction, has reportedly regained consciousness and is recovering with her family.
Football returned to the fore on Thursday with “Milan vs Man United” and “Man. City vs Liverpool” each seeing more than 20 000 searches as people searched for information on the pre-season friendlies.
Other terms to trend during the week included, “Powerball results 24 July 2018” (20 000+ searches), “Somizi Fiance Mohale” (10 000+ searches), “The Open” (10 000+ searches), and “Percy Tau” (10 000+ searches).
Google processes more than 40 000+ search queries every second. This translates to more than a billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide. Google trends data is updated hourly and is available on https://www.google.co.za/trends.
Search trends in South Africa tend to be news and sports-driven. People search for things they hear or see on the news, and sports search terms trend several times a week, on average, every week.
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Through products and platforms like Search, Maps, Gmail, Android, Google Play, Chrome and YouTube, Google plays a meaningful role in the daily lives of billions of people and has become one of the most widely-known companies in the world. Google is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.