Google has announced its annual Zeitgeist, a look at 2012 through the collective eyes of the World Wide Web, offering a unique perspective on the hottest trends based on searches conducted in Ghana in 2012.
Google search trends show that in the last 12 months, Ghanaians have been more interested in music and musical stars than politics, even though it is barely a few days to one of the most heated and competitive elections in Ghana’s history.
Terms such as ‘Azonto dance’ and ‘Sarkordie’, the acclaimed Azonto king, were more popular than any of the presidential candidates or political parties. More than a year and a half since Azonto broke into popular Ghanaian culture, the dance fever is still going on strong – Ghanaians absolutely love it!
Other popular searches for the year 2012 include Whitney Houston’ who died tragically earlier this year, and ‘Eddie Murphy’, whose death hoax ran wild on internet, particularly social networking sites.
These searches show that Ghanaians not only care about the craft of their favourite stars, but they care about their well-being as well.
In 2012, Ghanaians also searched for sports related terms like ‘Usain Bolt’, ‘Olympics 2012’, ‘Euro 2012 fixtures’ and ‘Van Persie’ showing that our love for sports in general and football in particular is still strong.
Additionally, searches of technology related terms liked ‘gmail sign in’, ‘whatsapp’, ‘Sumsung Galaxy S3’ ‘facebook (fb)’ and ‘Trader’ were also trending.
These searches indicate that now more than ever, Ghanaians are using technology and the internet as a tool to communicate with and stay connected to friends and loved ones, and allowing them to stay connected to the rest of the world.
The Google Zeitgeist is a tool which explores the billions of search queries received by Google, and highlights the top trends.
Some of Ghana’s most popular searches for the year 2012 include: Azonto Dance; fb.com; Olympic Games 2012; Euro 2012 fixtures; Sarkodie and Whitney Houston.
Instructively, Google reveals the internet “Zeitgeist” (German for “the spirit of the times”) through an exploration of the billions of search queries we receive each year. In addition to the month-end Zeitgeist, which highlights the top trends of the month, Google also has several tools that give insight into global, regional, past and present search trends. Google Zeitgeist tools can never be used to identify individual users because we rely on anonymized, aggregated counts of how often certain search queries occur over time.
Source: allAfrica