News Home > Google News
Google's Zeitgeist List
Zeitgeist is a list compiled by Google every December, which looks at what searches are most common, as well as an increase or decrease in frequency.The Zeitgeist list consists of four categories, one of which is “Top of the Mind”. One of the most searched for terms in this category is bizarrely, “How to kiss”. The other searches in this category are at least more meaningful, for example, “who is God” and “what is love”. The second favourite “who is” search suggests the vast number of people who just use Google to fool around by searching, “who is who”. And the search “who is lookup” suggests that some people have no idea how to use the Google search engine.
Times Online also reported that a vast majority of people use Google to gain information on medical and technology terms such as, “what is autism”, “what is RSS” and “what is lupus”.
“Master Cleanse Recipe”, a supposed weight-loss and detox remedy tops the search in the “All the Rage” category. This is followed by searches for food and one drink, the “mojito”, the only drink in the top 10.
Alarmingly, the “Newsmakers” category only had two searches in the top 10 that could qualify as real news, namely “Iran” which only made it in at number 9, and “iPhone” at number 6. The rest of the list is made up with searches such as “American Idol”, “YouTube” and “Britney Spears”.
Google comments on the news results: "This year we clearly had politics on our minds, but even with the 2008 US election season already upon us, we welcomed diversions from the famous and the infamous. As presidential hopefuls gave us their pitches, we all managed to keep up with our favourite reality shows and investigate rumours about colourful celebrities."
The Zeitgeist also shows the growing popularity of online shopping. Finding somewhere to purchase the Wii online and numerous searches for iTunes show an increase over the past year in the “All the Rage” list.
Google News posted on 18 December 2007
