Нов български университет

Resume: As Internet becomes more and more significant necessity in our everyday live, Google becomes our most important source of information. On the other hand, the largest search engine collects the data from the annual users’ online searches and provides to us a report about the trending searches during the year. Thus we can make the conclusion about what is the humanity excited the most and that we are becoming more open to the world. Contrary, we are becoming more and more interested in popular culture, dieting and reality celebrities than in global politics or events which are changing the world.

Key words: content, Google, information, search engine, top searches, trend searches;

Internet is a huge part of our lives nowadays. Some people could not imagine their life without it and the other part of the people could not understand how we managed to live before having Internet. Now we talk through social networks, emails and instant messaging applications, we can learn about events worldwide minutes after they occur, we have the opportunity to learn remotely at university thanks to the online network, even raise revolutions using the Internet. Nevertheless, most of the time we spent online is for searching for information. Yet, even in 21[st] century, it is the most important currency.

There are thousands of search engines in Internet - global, local, private ones, divisions of the major search engines, but we won’t be wrong if saying that Google is the most powerful one or at least most used one in the world. In this particular search engine, there are 2.4 million search queries every internet minute and the name of the company became a synonym of knowledge and content and we even use it as verb: “Google it” or “Something has been Googled”. Basically, the obvious conclusion is that in the digital era books, encyclopedias and reference books remain in the background when you are offered the opportunity to find the necessary information in a split second. Actually, the situation with the digital space nowadays is very similar to the “Hunger games” [1] with the difference that people are not literally fighting for their lives but feel hunger for knowledge and information and are constantly searching for content. Virtually, many people are attributing to Google the qualities of “Big brother” since this search engine knows everything about us - behavior, interests, what we are searching for, where exactly we look for information and not coincidentally there is a saying: “What happens in Internet, stays in Internet”. Every action or uploaded file is stored somewhere in cyberspace but it actually gives us content for analysis. That is how Google summarizes the top searches in the end of the year. 

Thanks to the collected data, the largest search engine submitted reports for the last 15 years about the top trending searches. The term “trending search” means these queries had the highest spike in traffic over a sustained period of time [2]. The information covers almost all countries in the world, including Bulgaria with reports for 2013 and 2014. Actually, this kind of “content” is really helpful and necessary because it gives a direction about what users are really searching for. Back in the days, in 2001, from the first Google report we know that online users were searching the most about Nokia, SONY, BMW and Harry Potter. Yet, now we know that the top trending searches have evolved.

In 2013, Bulgarians have done quite various searches on local level which are divided by categories: Words, How to…, What is..., Songs, Events, Recipes, Diets, TV programs, Vacations and People.

The category "Words" (Picture 1), in fact, summarizes the most popular user searches and gives us a holistic view of the information that has excited most people during the year. At the top three places, we can find Turkish TV series, the name of American actor who died in car crash and the song that broke the records for viewing in YouTube. In general terms, the most important information for Bulgarians in 2013 was about reality shows and in penultimate place was graded event of national importance, namely early parliamentary elections. Actually, if we assume literally the theme “Hunger for content”, we can easily make the link with the results of Top Google Searches in the category “How to…”  (Picture 2) – “how to lose weight” and “how to gain weight” are respectively at first and fourth place. As we can see on the pictures, a comparison can be easily made with the category "Words" - in this case something which is of national importance is even on last place, namely "How to vote".

Globally speaking, 2013 was truly diverse in terms of the most popular searches – technology, personalities who changed the world, events. The top three searches are: Nelson Mandela, Paul Walker and iPhone 5S (Picture 3). Actually, two of the searches are also in the overview for Bulgaria – Paul Walker and Harlem Shake - thus we can conclude that they were something like global trend. On the other hand, journalists are not remain indifferent in terms of the top global searches in 2013 and one of them, perhaps, makes the most realistic summary - Amadou Diallo from Forbes [3]: “Results like this would certainly seem to provide fodder for those lamenting the cultural decline that places Paul Walker and the Harlem Shake in such close proximity to Nelson Mandela.”

In 2014, the algorithm of Google for reporting top searches in Bulgaria was changed and the category "Words" but the others remain: “How to…”, “What is…”, “Where is…”, Recipes, Events, Diets, TV programs and People. Especially for Bulgaria, the main results are not very different from previous year – the Bulgarian users are interested in “How to lose weight”, “How to get pregnant”, “What is swag”, TV reality shows.  However, there are some top searches which are similar to the global ones – ebola, Robin Williams, World Football Cup, Winter Olympics (Picture 4). In the same year, regarding events, issues and personalities related to Bulgaria, most people looked for: parliamentary elections, Kubrat Pulev, national holidays. In relation to the first example, compared with 2013, in 2014 the search for "How to vote" is 5 places higher up in the ranking therefore we can conclude that a year later more Bulgarians felt the need for proper information about the elections and the political situation in the country (Picture 5).    

As a summary for the top searches globally (Picture 6), Heather Kelly from CNN is saying: “In 2013, people just wanted to know how to twerk. It was a more innocent time. This year, people wanted to know if they had Ebola” [4].

As an addition, we can conclude that the whole world was mourning about Robin Williams, was excited about the World Cup and Sochi’s Olympics, was looking for information about the virtual phenomenon Ice Bucket Challenge and last but not least in importance – people were concerned about the missing Malaysian airplane. Nevertheless, it is obvious that Conchita Wurst is more popular trend than Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) for which organization the whole world was talking about most intense precisely in 2014.

Inexplicably in 2015, Google stopped collecting data on popular searches in Bulgaria and there is no available data whether the sought information has changed for that period. However, the report on global searches gives us enough information what people cared about worldwide and enough food for thought. In the year of refugee crisis, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, Greek debt crisis, marriage equality in USA and after millions and millions of searches, the top trending global search was about Lamar Odom – a former NBA player and TV celebrity who was found unconscious in brothel (Picture 7).

At least people were trying to be informed more about the situation in Paris and the attack in “Charlie Hebdo” than about the multiplayer game Agar.io. Moreover, the ranking is completed by the titles of the movies “Jurassic Park”, “American sniper”, “Furious 7” and two more popular figures: Ronda Rousey – Olympic medalist in judo and Caitlyn Jenner – formerly known as Bruce Jenner – Olympic gold medal-winning decathlete and now TV personality and one of the most famous transgender woman in the world.

As online users make 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide [5], show clearly that they need information every single day and they are hungry for content. This is actually the obvious conclusion but when we analyze the results from the annual Google reports the picture becomes more realistic and not in a good way. We are living in a world where Nelson Mandela is almost equal to Paul Walker, where the question “How to lose weight?” is more important than “How to vote on elections?”, where mobile games are more major issue than terrorist attacks, where Google actually can tell you how to get rich. Reality shows celebrities are something like the new cultural ambassadors and we are and monitoring their every action or statement, of course, online. The conclusion really is that the so-called "mass culture" began to conquer each of us, no matter where in the world we are.

Some people say that knowledge is food for the soul but perhaps exactly the content we are looking for the most in the recent years will leave us hungry.

References:

1.What Happens in an Internet Minute in 2016?, http://www.visualcapitalist.com/what-happens-internet-minute-2016/?utm_source=linkedIn&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=SocialWarfare

2.Top Google Searches in Bulgaria for 2013, https://www.google.com/trends/topcharts#vm=cat&geo=BG&date=2013&cid

3.Top Google global trending searches for 2013, https://www.google.com/trends/topcharts#vm=cat&geo&date=2013&cid

4.Top Google Searches in Bulgaria for 2014, https://www.google.com/trends/topcharts#vm=cat&geo=BG&date=2014&cid

5.Top Google global trending searches for 2014, https://www.google.com/trends/topcharts#vm=cat&geo&date=2014&cid

6.Top Google global trending searches for 2015, https://www.google.com/trends/topcharts#vm=cat&geo&date=2015&cid