The champions of Europe, South Africa’s premier beauty pageant, and high profile rap feud were among the top trending searches on Google South Africa this week.
Over the weekend, soccer fans around the world were glued to their screens as Real Madrid did battle with Liverpool in the Uefa Champions’ League final. While parts of the game were marred by rough play and Liverpool goalkeeper Lorius Karius’ mishaps, it will undoubtedly be remembered for the Gareth Bale’s bicycle-kick goal, which put the match to rest. Real Madrid coming out tops saw them shoot to the top of Saturday’s trending search terms with more than 500 000 searches.
Also on Saturday, “Miss South Africa 2018” emerged as a trending term, drawing in more than 50 000 searches. The 60th edition of the beauty pageant took place on Sunday, resulting in more than 100 000 searches. Winner Tamaryn Green hails from the Western Cape and is a medical student. She cites former Miss South Africa Rolene Strauss a role model.
She is woman.
She is strength and softness.
She is passion and courage.
She has hope, beauty and power.
She gives you respect, gratitude and love.
She is a queen.
She is your Miss South Africa, @TamarynGreen.? @jacquesdpsa
MUAH by @Dyllz23 & @diqasa
?@AnelBothaC pic.twitter.com/gGSRIP6pFn— Miss South Africa (@Official_MissSA) May 30, 2018
In less celebratory news, “Nomzamo Mbatha” (20 000+ searches) was the top trending term on Monday. The Isibaya actress trended amidst rumours that she was splitting up with actor, model, and businessman Maps Maponyane. Mbatha took to Twitter on the day to quash all suggestions of a split.
On Tuesday meanwhile the PSL awards took top spot, drawing in more than 20 000 searches. Also with 20 000+ searches on the day was Valerie Jarrett, a former Barack Obama aide who was the target of a racists tweet by US comedian Roseanne Barr.
Things got a little more heated on Wednesday, when “Pusha T” (50 000+ searches) rose to the top of the day’s trends. The hip hop artist attracted high search volumes after releasing a diss track aimed at fellow rapper Drake. The track, which is just the latest salvo in an ongoing feud between the two artists, includes an allegation that Drake has a secret love-child.
Other terms to trend during the week included Africa Day (20 000+ searches), Fabinho (20 000+ searches), and Nicki Minaj (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.
For more information, visit our Google Africa G+ page or our Google Africa Blog: google-africa.blogspot.com. You can also follow Google’s Africa team on Twitter: twitter.com/googleafrica.