Posted on Monday, December 24th, 2012 by Uri Halevi
2012 was a year of big moments and trends, from global games to historical elections and everything in between. Google Zeitgeist analyzed over one trillion queries to showcase what the world searched for.
Google Zeitgeist is the kind of ambitious project only the all mighty Google team can accomplish. In order to launch this amazing site Google studied an aggregation of over one trillion searches (or queries) that people typed into Google Search this year. They used data from multiple sources, including Google Trends and internal data tools, filtered out spam and repeat queries to build lists that best reflect the spirit of 2012. You can see the searching patterns of American users and compare it with any other country that has a local Google service or you can see world wide trends… This project really showcases the omnipotent reach that Google has over the internet throughout the entire globe.
One of the most interesting features on the Google Zeitgeist project is the ‘Explore the Map’ option; on it you can see geographical locations of searchable items from around the world, for example you can see that ‘Hurricane Sandy’ was searched mostly in the U.S but was significantly searched in the U.K, Canada and Brazil as well… Another interesting thing you can do with these lists is check your own search patterns and compare it with other people in your country or other people in the world. All you have to do is enable “Web History” in your Google Account. I think that Google Zeitgeist summarizes 2012 perfectly, check it out and learn what where the searching trends of the passing year.
