Ever wondered what other people look up on the internet? Search engine Google keeps track of the top queries entered around the world with Google Zeitgeist. According to the California-based company, Zeitgeist is supposed to reveal a little about the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of the era we find ourselves in today.
The word “zeitgeist” comes from the German language, “zeit” meaning time and “geist” meaning spirit. But all the difficult explanations aside, it is plainly fun to see what your fellow surfers are up to.
It turns out that South Africans are mainly looking for financial information, as all major banks were represented in the top search queries for last February. Not surprising for a young democracy on the up where more and more people are slowly getting a chance to climb the professional ladder and earn good money. Other popular queries included jobs, Vodacom, Kulula and Unisa. Blonde heiress Paris Hilton was at number two while movie star Jessica Alba closed February’s top ten.
Can it be assumed that the ones looking for these two barely dressed women are predominantly of the male gender getting bored at work or seeking leisure late at night behind their desktop?
Little Miss Hilton was not just highly sought after in South Africa; she was also in the top ten results for the United Kingdom, Sweden, Poland, and Denmark.
In Singapore the prime position was held by another turn-on, but this time a blue one: Viagra. Italians lived up to their sporty nature, looking for soccer clubs and star player Ronaldinho, Indians went crazy about cricket and national film heroine Aishwarya Rai, and the English were feeling lucky browsing the web for the national lottery.
Millions of searches result in billions of search statistics that are all automatically generated. Google Zeitgeist is not purely mechanical and there are humans reviewing the search results, looking for trends and compiling the periodically updated Google Zeitgeist report. It shows search patterns, gaining search-queries and popular searches sorted by topic and country.
Fanatics can even check the Zeitgeist archive to see what people were looking for in previous months.
Not all search queries can be logically explained. News, the weather, and celebrities seem straightforward enough, but how to explain that thousands of English people who were looking for information on paintball, or the Greeks who were searching for anything to do with the Titanic?
Some of the stuff people search for tends to be seasonal. February charts for South Africa were all about Valentine’s Day and love while at the end of last year people where looking up Christmas. And Paris Hilton.
Apparently, some things remain interesting all-year round.
Google South Africa Searches: Most Popular Queries (Feb 2006)
1. absa
2. paris hilton
3. vodacom
4. jobs
5. unisa
6. standard bank
7. valentine
8. love
9. fnb.co.za
10. jessica alba
11. 50 cent
12. nedbank
13. kulula
14. valentines day
Related articles:
– Google Zeitgeist page: Top searches from other countries