Hi, everybody! Time to bid farewell to 2021 problems and welcome the New Year! Whatever the future holds in store for us, it’s always helpful to reflect on what has gone by. Did you spend a lot of time online this year? 

What did people google this year? (Image by StartupStockPhotos from Pixabay)

With most countries still transitioning to new levels of normality with the emergence of Covid-19 vaccines, the majority of us was still spending a lot longer at home than usual (and logging a lot more hours on the web). And one of the most trivial and commonplace activities online are web searches. On average, how often do you google things? Do you normally google things in English or do you stick to your native language?

Today’s post is based on Google’s yearly report on search trends. Every year, the tech giant releases their “A Year in Search” page, compiling the most popular terms and phrases of the past 12 months worldwide. Keep in mind, though, that these results leave out top searches from the previous year, so Covid and vaccines will not be featured in the annual recap.

If you want to satisfy your curiosity and find out what people typed into their search bars this, say no more! Find below a list of the most googled keywords and questions in English in 2021– explained (so you don’t have to google them again!):

Most googled keywords:

1. Australia vs Índia – It refers to the Indian cricket team matches in Australia.
2. India vs England – Similarly, this is about the Indian cricket team touring England.
3. IPL – Again, IPL stands for Indian Premier League, a professional cricket league.
4. NBA – It stands for National Basketball Association, a professional basketball league in the U.S.
5. Euro 2021 – More sports!  People were looking for info on the UEFA European Championship, the international men’s soccer tournament that takes place in Europe every four years.
6. Copa América – the 47th men’s soccer championship in South America, which took place in Brazil.
7. India vs New Zealand – You guessed it! Índia’s cricket team touring New Zealand.
8. T20 World Cup – And of course,  the international championship of cricket, whose cup is currently held by Australia.
9. Squid Game – On a different note, this entry is about Netflix’s hugely sucessful and highly acclaimed Korean TV show, which stands as the platform’s most watched series.
10. DMX – American rapper who peaked in the early 2000s’ and died of a heart attack as a result of a drug overdose in April of this year.
    

    Let’s use google stats to understand the year that has gone by (Photo by Polina Tankilevitch from Pexels)

Most googled questions:

1. What to watch 
2. What is my ip 
3. How many ounces in a cup
4. What if 
5. How to delete instagram account
6. How to screenshot on mac 
7. What time is it 
8. Where am i 
9. How many weeks in a year 
10. What if marvel 

So what do you think these top searches say about the world? Let us hope that entries like “new covid variant” or “new covid wave” definitely don’t make it to the top next year!

Have you googled any of the searches above yourself? You can visit Google’s  search stats page and play around to find out about the most googled words across wide-ranging categories such as news,

food or actors, besides being able to select different locations.

Happy Holidays, all! See you in 2022!