Google’s Year in Search 2022
Google released their year-end search data yesterday.
Here’s what people were searching for the most in 2022 . . .
People:
1. Johnny Depp
2. Will Smith
3. Amber Heard
4. Antonio Brown
5. Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake
Actors:
1. Johnny Depp
2. Will Smith
3. Amber Heard
4. Chris Rock
5. Julia Fox . . . She was briefly Kanye’s girlfriend.
Passings:
1. Betty White
2. Queen Elizabeth
3. Bob Saget
4. Anne Heche
5. Aaron Carter
Movies:
1. “Encanto”
2. “Thor: Love and Thunder”
3. “Top Gun: Maverick”
4. “The Batman”
5. “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
TV Shows:
1. “Euphoria”
2. “Stranger Things”
3. “The Watcher”
4. “Inventing Anna”
5. “House of the Dragon”
Musicians and Bands:
1. Adam Levine
2. Mary J. Blige
3. Lil Tjay
4. Kendrick Lamar
5. Migos
Songs:
1. “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from “Encanto”
2. “Surface Pressure” from “Encanto”
3. “Jiggle Jiggle”, Duke & Jones and Louis Theroux
4. “Unholy”, Sam Smith and Kim Petras
5. “As It Was”, Harry Styles
Athletes:
1. Antonio Brown
2. Serena Williams
3. Joe Burrow
4. Aaron Judge
5. Manti Te’o
Sports Teams:
1. Philadelphia Phillies
2. Boston Celtics
3. Golden State Warriors
4. Cincinnati Bengals
5. Los Angeles Rams
This next category is the “Hum to Search” feature on the Google app. How it works is you tap on the mic icon, then click the “search a song” button. Then you hum a song for 10 to 15 seconds and it SHOULD be able to identify it.
Here are the Top Songs that were hummed:
1. “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)”, Backstreet Boys
2. “Never Gonna Give You Up”, Rick Astley
3. “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from “Encanto”
4. “Enemy”, Imagine Dragons
5. “Seven Nation Army”, The White Stripes
(Check out all the categories here. You can also expand each category to see the Top 10.)
Google released its annual “Year in Search” stats . . . and in 2022, it was dominated by: Wordle, elections, and celebrity deaths.
Here’s a rundown of the top searches in the U.S. . . .
1. The top news topics we googled were: Mid-term election results . . . Queen Elizabeth’s passing . . . Ukraine . . . Powerball numbers . . . and Hurricane Ian.
2. The top words we wanted defined were: Rupee . . . Oligarch . . . Cacao . . . Homer . . . and Recession. (It looks like “rupee”, “cacao”, and “homer” all spiked after they were featured in Wordle.)
3. The top “how to help others” searches were: “How to help Ukraine” . . . “How to help Ukrainian refugees” . . . “How to help abortion rights” . . . “How to help Ukraine army” . . . and “How to help Uvalde.” (The town in Texas that suffered a tragic elementary school shooting in May.)
4. The top “how to pronounce” searches were: “How to pronounce Qatar” . . . “How to pronounce Kyiv” . . . “How to pronounce puzzle” (???) . . . “How to pronounce Omicron” . . . and “How to pronounce ‘Encanto’.”
5. The top “near me” searches were: “Gas prices near me” . . . “At-home Covid testing near me” . . . “Voting near me” . . . “Early voting near me” . . . and “PCR test near me.”
6. The most-searched games were: Wordle . . . Quordle . . . Elden Ring . . . Heardle . . . and Worldle. (“WORLDLE” is probably the frequent misspelling of Wordle . . . I do it too . . . but there is a geography game called Worldle.)
7. The top recipes we searched for were: Sugo . . . Cincinnati Chili . . . Marry Me Chicken . . . Quick Pancake . . . and Mango Pie.
(Sugo is an Italian red sauce . . . Marry Me Chicken is a viral one-pot dish involving chicken, cream, and parmesan . . . and “Quick Pancake” is like a regular pancake. But quicker.) (???)
8. The top SHORTAGES we searched for were: Diesel shortage . . . baby formula shortage . . . tampon shortage . . . Adderall shortage . . . and Sriracha shortage.
9. The top “Who Is?” we searched for were: “Who is Andrew Tate?” . . . “Who is winning the election?” . . . “Who is the king of England?” . . . “Who is ‘the watcher’?” . . . and “Who is Alex Jones?” (“The Watcher” is a Netflix show.)
10. The Top Five searches overall this year were: Wordle . . . election results . . . Betty White, who passed on December 31st of last year . . . Queen Elizabeth, who passed in September . . . and Bob Saget, who passed in January.
(For more on sports, entertainment, and deaths, check out our Showbiz coverage of the Year in Search, here.)
(To dig in deeper, here’s the full Google Trends report.)
(For example, you can find the most popular LOCAL searches, here. And the top GLOBAL searches, here.)
