The Best of Times, The Worst of TImes
December 11, 2012 9:34 AM   Subscribe

Released today: the top Google searches of 2012. Also, the top Google searches in the UK. Hungry for more "Best of 2012" collections? Curious about "best of" versus "most popular"? There's much

Images
100 Best images of 2012 (chosen from top images of the day):
Best Photojournalism of 2012.
After that, you'll need these: Best wild animal photos, National Geographic.

Books
Publishers Weekly top picks.
Goodreads' readers pick their top books (Mefi's own jscalzi makes the cut)
Amazon's editors picks for best books of the year.
Compare to the bestselling books from Amazon, Powell's (includes the instant classic, "I could Pee on This and Other Poems by Cats"), and Barnes and Noble.

People
Time's 100 Most Influential People: (view as a list) (Barbara Walters' "most fascinating people" will air on Wednesday here in the States, but is known to include One Direction and Honey Boo Boo.
Google's most popular women of 2012.
Compare with Facebook's 15 most popular people.

Miscellaneous
Tumblr's most popular post of all time, best of Reddit.
posted by misha (19 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
I assume this is after 'porn', 'sex', 'threesomes' and so on...
posted by empath at 9:43 AM on December 11, 2012 [2 favorites]


Also the New York Times 10 best books of 2012 - and their long list of 100 notable books from 2012.
posted by k8lin at 10:04 AM on December 11, 2012


I think empath is right; they must have filtered those out.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 10:20 AM on December 11, 2012


The first two links are solely UK search results and are reporting on the same list. I looked around, there is no US or global list yet.
posted by charlie don't surf at 10:27 AM on December 11, 2012


"There's much [more inside]" Works on the front page.
posted by salishsea at 10:31 AM on December 11, 2012


where's Waldo?
posted by mule98J at 10:32 AM on December 11, 2012


I like to think of all those UK Google searchers for Homeland watching the show and believing it to be an accurate representation of the Central Intelligence Agency.
posted by Egg Shen at 10:52 AM on December 11, 2012


Yeah, these are clearly filtered. Every time I've seen unfiltered searches like 7 of the top 10 have been "Kim Kardashian", "Kate Upton", and so on.
posted by Justinian at 10:59 AM on December 11, 2012


Also: I only see the top searches in the UK. The list in the first link is identical to the UK list in the second link.
posted by Justinian at 11:01 AM on December 11, 2012


I am not familiar with many of these things/names/events (in the Google lists).
I do think the whole exercise is invalidated by this category (despite its not being bolded like the others):
Most searched divorces/break-ups on Google

what

I would like to maybe see the most searched phrases starting with "how do I".
posted by Glinn at 11:18 AM on December 11, 2012


Most searched divorces/break-ups on Google
what

I would like to maybe see the most searched phrases starting with "how do I"


how do i tell if my wife is cheating on me
how do i kill my husband
posted by DU at 11:34 AM on December 11, 2012


Is Google not updating Zeitgeist any more?
posted by ardgedee at 12:11 PM on December 11, 2012


The lack of explanation for the April Jones search is a little puzzling. All the stories I've seen about the UK results have just skipped from 4 to 6.
posted by fullerine at 12:16 PM on December 11, 2012


charlie don't surf: : "The first two links are solely UK search results and are reporting on the same list. I looked around, there is no US or global list yet."

Hmm, yes, I think you're right. That's interesting; what I thought when I made the post was that Google had a world, or general, top search list (link 1), which various .uk sites had then filtered for the UK (link 2).

Item, there's much...




...anticipation!
posted by misha at 12:37 PM on December 11, 2012


2012 as seen on Twitter

Though it needs more Sarcastic Rover.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 2:15 PM on December 11, 2012


I think we agreed earlier this year that this belongs at the top of every list of everything this year.
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:18 PM on December 11, 2012


I'd be a lot more interested in the actual data with a year-to-year comparison; you can find what stuff is more popular this year vs. last year with that (because no one's searching for things that aren't popular/existant yet). The way this is presented (as a puff piece without any data or methodology information) makes it hard to draw actual interesting conclusions.

But then I also just like seeing top google searches because I'm curious what sex stuff the congregate of humanity is into and how terrible they are at spelling the names for those acts.
posted by NoraReed at 9:40 PM on December 11, 2012


Is Netflix in the UK now?
posted by panaceanot at 12:57 AM on December 12, 2012


Ah, here we go: Google Zeitgeist 2012.

Get it straight from the horse's mouth, as it were, free of random journos' blather, and with a minimum of Google's own blather.
posted by ardgedee at 6:28 AM on December 12, 2012 [1 favorite]


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