The one thing more Americans typed into Google this year wasn’t Donald Trump, or Hillary Clinton, or even iPhone 7. It was Powerball. The rest of the world seemed equally unconcerned with the news, searching for Pokémon Go above all other queries.
Google’s annual list of all the things people searched for in 2016 offers all kinds of surprises about the world’s monthly fixations on consumer tech, global news, losses, and more. Some of it’s fairly predictable—globally, Donald Trump was the person most often searched for, and “US election” was topped the global news category. But some of them are weirdly specific, like Virginia Beach, Virginia tallying the most searches for Channing Tatum.
Taken together, the results, which you can view by country and topic, create a tableau of what people around the world were thinking, and when.
It wasn’t all political, nor was it all bad. Google detailed its breakout searches, the topics that “set a new all-time high” in interest. “International Women’s Day” trended high in Bolivia in March. People in San Marino made “succulent plant” a hot topic in May. You can play detective with these curious queries, and track interest over time and related searches. If you’re wondering why Céline Dion was a hot topic in January, these charts will clue you in. (The spike centered in France, the week her husband, who was French, died.)
Clicking through Google Trends feels like tapping the world’s consciousness. There’s no posturing, because people query Google without shame, as if no one is watching. For that reason, the Year in Search 2016 is probably the only end-of-year list you’ll find without bias. It’s people simply being themselves. And this year, a lot of people wanted to win Powerball.
