NELSON Mandela and Oscar Pistorius have, unsurprisingly, topped the list of the year’s most popular Google search terms in South Africa.
Google South Africa released its “year-end zeitgeist” on Tuesday, with data on the top trending and most searched terms in the country.
These lists, released annually for the past 12 years, “give us insight into the curiosities that captured the world’s attention in 2013″, said Julie Taylor, head of communications at Google SA.
Google creates the lists through its Google Trends feature, which measures the volume of searches around terms and topics, as well as other internal measurements and aggregations.
“Trending searches” measures the terms that had the highest amount of web traffic at a specific time throughout the year, while “most searched” ranks terms by volume of searches.
Unsurprisingly, former president Mandela, who died in Johannesburg on December 5, topped all of the overall lists, followed by Olympic runner Pistorius, accused of murdering his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, who also featured prominently on many of the lists.
Vuyo Mbuli, the SABC radio and television presenter who died in June of a pulmonary embolism, came at least fourth on the lists of trending overall searches, trending people and trending men. His wife came in second on trending South African women.
When it came to trending politicians, academic and activist Mamphela Ramphele came first, followed by young Democratic Alliance stars Mmusi Maimane and Lindiwe Mazibuko.
For most searched, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema was sandwiched between President Jacob Zuma and former president Thabo Mbeki.
The events that captured the attention of the country ranged from Hollywood actor Paul Walker’s car-crash death to the Boston marathon bombing and Reeva Steenkamp’s funeral. Mandela was first in this category.
Android’s recent BBM addition was at the top of technology-related searches, and dance act Swedish House Mafia topped the trending music search list.
The launching of Mr Malema’s EFF was the most widely searched political event, followed by the Red October marches and the annual budget speech by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan.
The word that people seemed to be the most confused about was the American term “twerk”. It topped the “how to” and “what is” lists.
Through Google Trends, users can create their own lists based on whatever criteria they deem most important. Google collects a database of information about search trends that users can access to find out what is most popular on the internet.
Ms Taylor described the lists as simply “what gadgets and gizmos were trending, to what styles were hot, to which athletes inspired us…. Zeitgeist showcases what captured the world’s attention this year through the lens of Google Search.”