The year 2015 was book-ended by tragic events in Paris — from the shooting at Charlie Hebdo in January to the multiple attacks around the city in November. And those events are among the top that drew the highest number of Internet searches, according to Google.
As 2015 comes to a close, Google has released its annual Year in Search, and the top searches go to former basketball player Lamar Odom, Jurrasic World, and American Sniper. The Google Trends website lets you browse through all the big events that happened throughout the year, from the recent Paris attacks to the Nepal earthquake in April. And while the highlights are marked by tragedy, Google has opted to search for the good. The Year in Search 2015 video, set to moving music and Caitlyn Jenner’s inspirational ESPYs acceptance speech, focuses on searches like “how can I help the refugees,” “how can we overcome prejudice,” and “how can the world find peace.”
The Paris attacks saw a whopping 897 million searches, the highest number of searches for the country in the history of Google. Another interesting top search showed more people searching for information regarding gun control than for gun shops throughout the year. Google says searches for gun shops are typically a more popular search. You can tune the Explore section to specific countries as well, if you prefer that to looking at global searches.
It’s important to note that the information represents searches from Google alone — so places where Google is not popular, like China and Russia, aren’t well represented. The company uses the total number of searches from Google Search, YouTube, and Google News, and has been providing a Year in Search for 15 years now. This year, though, the search giant is offering a lot more visual information along with its data.
“The 2015 Year in Search goes deeper than we’ve ever gone before. This year, we’re covering hundreds of news stories, sharing interactive guides and charts, and diving into the numbers by sharing things like how many times people searched for Adele (439 million, if you want to know),” said Amit Singhal, senior vice president of Google Search in the blog post announcement.
The year’s top trending people, after Lamar Odom, were Caitlyn Jenner, Ronda Rousey, and unsurprisingly, Donald Trump. The Top Charts show more information ranging from “top dog” questions to GIF searches.
You can head over to Google Trends to browse through various events, top searches, and trending information the company has made available.
We can’t forget about Star Wars: The Force Awakens though, and neither has Google. The company says that from the trailer alone, Star Wars generated more than 155 million searches, which still hasn’t topped the number of searches generated after Revenge of the Sith hit theaters 10 years ago. We’ll find out if that changes after this week.
