google — Business Day — Jonathan Greig

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.

Former president Nelson Mandela chats with Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown (not pictured) during a meeting at his hotel in central London, in this June 24 2008 file photo. (Picture: REUTERS)

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.”

*featured on the Business Day website on 12/17/13

LAST week, as a warning sounded of possible hailstorms in Johannesburg, Google South Africa staff noticed a peculiar trend.

As the number of local web searches for terms such as “hail”, “hail storm” and “hail damage” rose quickly, the number of advertisements from South African insurers and businesses related to hail and hail damage did not change at all.

Julie Taylor, head of communications for sub-Saharan Africa at Google, said: “While all the leading insurers list ‘hail damage’ as a top concern for the coming month, there are no, or extremely few, companies advertising against the search terms ‘hail’, ‘hail damage’ and ‘hail storms’.

“Insurers and other businesses need to make the connection between offline events (such as big hail storms in Johannesburg) and online searches for products and services that they offer, like insurance to cover your car damage when it happens,” she said.

Google’s AdWords system has been able to separate itself from the pack (and contribute more than $42bn in ad revenue last year) through its innovative ties to the web search function for which the company is better known.

Businesses can bid through an online auction system to have their ads appear next to certain sets of search results. The price to have an ad placed against the results for a specific search term varies depending on the frequency of searches for that term. Companies only pay the price once someone clicks on their ads.

“Our goal is to help advertisers reach people who need what they’re offering,” said Luke Mckend, Google South Africa country director. “This system gives businesses the ability to react quickly to significant events and respond to users needs faster than traditional media.”

Yet many businesses in South Africa are still figuring out how best to use the AdWords system and, more importantly, how to exploit real-world situations to their commercial advantage.

Carl Louw, executive head of marketing at Johannesburg-based short-term insurer Telesure, only started advertising his company against hail-related terms last week once he realised the prices were low even though the search frequency was high.

Businesses accustomed to placing day-to-day print newspaper ads are also still catching up to the speed of the Google AdWords system, which lets them respond to changing search trends within minutes.

When asked about why so few insurance companies are bidding against search terms related to hail, Gideon Galloway, CEO of King Price Insurance, said: “The price is so cheap, yet no one is bidding on them at the moment. Thus, it must be pure oversight; you can’t cover them all.”

The infinite range of possible search terms can indeed make it difficult for companies to pinpoint where their ads will be most effective.

Mr Mckend said people generally used two different strategies. “With the ‘always on’ method, services with unchanging related words keep their ads relatively constant in terms of searches they post ads against.

“And then there are the tactical campaigns, which track things like seasons and tourist patterns to try to capture moments in time — like a flower shop on Valentine’s Day.”

Businesses also try to jump on the bandwagon of fads that may not directly relate to their products. Ms Taylor spoke of an instance where pop band Just Jinjer’s lead singer, Ard Matthews, sang the national anthem and forgot the lyrics. Searches for YouTube clips of the performance spiked, which prompted First National Bank to post ads against the singer’s name.

With so much information available about the way people search, Google is learning how populations respond to events and using this data to help businesses get their messages out to specific audiences.

“Advertisers can’t afford to treat every country and every city the same any more, because of the cultural differences in online search patterns,” Mr Mckend said. “Search terms, in aggregate, represent the cultural zeitgeist — what the country as a whole is thinking at that moment.”

*featured on Business Day website on 11/7/13