If you’ve always enjoyed Google’s yearly Zeitgeist reports, covering what the world has been searching for over the past twelve months, you’ll be pleased to know the tech giant is now introducing a weekly search trends post that provides more regular updates about what’s on our collective mind.
As anyone with a calendar would have been able to guess, queries relating to Easter topped the first round of charts published by Google — there were more searches for “Good Friday” and “Palm Sunday” than for the Pope. Many of us were searching for ingredients associated with Passover meals, while in the U.S. search terms related to tax returns rose sharply ahead of the April 15 deadline.
There were over 5 million searches related to the rare “blood moon” lunar eclipse which happened on Tuesday. Other popular topical searches were for the Boston Marathon (one year on from the terrorist attack), Gabriel García Márquez (the Colombian author who died this week) and Chelsea Clinton (now expecting her first child).
Entertainment topics were also extensively researched: queries for who did what to whom on Game of Thrones soared up to fourth place on Monday, proving that millions of the show’s viewers haven’t read the books. Gone Girl was another hot entertainment topic with the release of the first trailer from David Fincher’s upcoming thriller film.
“If you’re interested in exploring trending topics on your own, check out Google Trends,” advises Google Blog Editor Emily Wood. “And starting today, you can also sign up to receive emails on your favorite terms, topics, or Top Charts for any of 47 countries.”
