Can’t stop hearing about Will Smith and Chris Rock’s Oscar incident? Disappointed at Bafana Bafana’s performance against France in the friendly? A round-up of the top search queries generated by South Africans based on Google search activity shows that you weren’t alone.
The deaths of prominent Hip Hop musician DJ Dimplez and Australian cricketer Shane Warne early on in March dominated the search results. South Africans’ love of sport was clear with seven of the top ten search terms for sporting fixtures and events. The Women’s Cricket World Cup ranked eighth on the list, after the South African women’s cricket team kept the country on the edge of their seats throughout the series.
The top two searched questions were both health-related questions linked to celebrities in the news. Following the Oscar slap incident, people turned to Google for more information on alopecia, the hair loss condition that actress Jada Pinkett Smith has been diagnosed with. People also sought out more information on aphasia, after actor Bruce Willis’s family announced he would quit acting after being diagnosed with the condition which affects the ability to speak, read and write.
Here’s what South Africans wanted to know in March:
| Top searched questions | Top searched terms |
| What is alopecia / what is alopecia disease? What is aphasia? Who is Nhlanhla Lux Dlamini? What is wrong with Zola 7? What is DRS in F1? What is brain haemorrhage? What is ubuntu? What is a computer? What is perjury? How to split the screen on a laptop? | DJ Dimplez Shane Warne Bafana Bafana Will Smith Chris Rock France vs South Africa Australia vs Pakistan Orlando Pirates vs Kaizer Chiefs Women’s Cricket World Cup Man City vs Man United South Africa vs Bangladesh |
Search trends information is gathered from data collated by Google based on what South Africans have been searching for. Google processes more than 40 000 search queries every second. This translates to more than a billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide. ‘Top searches’ indicate searches that topped Google’s charts while ‘Most searched’ queries are the most popular terms for the past 15 years, ranked in order by volume of searches.
Featured image: by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash
