It’s that time of the year again when we wrap up and look back at the year that was. And obviously, Google, the top search engine in South Africa, lists the top trending searches for the year as with other years since 2006, when Google Trends was initially introduced.
But what is Google Trends?
Let me track back a bit and stop assuming that everyone is like me and knows everything there is to know about Google and its products.
Google Trends is a fantastic, completely free tool that records popular search terms used on Google and YouTube worldwide. I love using it to see which keywords are on the rise or compare how different topics stack up against each other.
Plus, it has some great graphs and charts to make all that data more visually appealing. It’s a must-have for anyone looking to understand better what people are searching for online. If you are curious about other countries trending searches, then you can access Google Trends directly.
However, this blog article focuses on looking at 2022 trending search trends in South Africa. Google has categorised the 2022 search trends into nine categories, namely; Loss, Lyrics, Trending “How to”, Trending “What is”, Trending “Who is”, Trending Movies/TV Shows, Trending People, Trending Searches, and lastly Trending Sport.
You can display the top 10 or 5 trends for each category on the Google Trends website. However, for the interest of time and your attention span, I will just go through the top 5 for each of the nine categories. If you want the complete lists for each category, you can head to Google Trends.
Try to guess any of the trends before actually going through the table below. Let’s start with the first category, loss, which speaks to trending searches for people who died in 2022 in South Africa.
| Loss 1) Riky Rick 2) Queen Elizabeth 3) Patrick Shai 4) DJ Sumbody 5) Takeoff |
Lyrics 1) lift me up lyrics 2) last last lyrics 3) under the influence lyrics 4) dali nguwe lyrics 5) osama lyrics |
Trending “How to” 1) How to check matric results online 2) How to check sassa status 3) How to apply for R350 grant 4) How to vote on big brother mzansi 2022 5) How to go live on whatsapp |
| Trending “What is” 1) what is vabbing 2) what is global warming 3) what is nato 4) what is the relationship between climate change and the regularity of droughts 5) what is monkeypox |
Trending “Who is” 1) Who is andrew tate? 2) Who is ceo of netflix? 3) Who is jeffrey dahmer? 4) Who is playing in the super bowl 2022? 5) Who is amber heard? |
Trending Movies/TV Shows 1) Big Brother Mzansi 2) Wednesday 3) Stranger Things 4) Tinder Swindler 5) Manifest |
| Trending People 1) Jaden Smith 2) Will Smith Chris Rock 3) Johnny Depp 4) Amber Heard 5) Zeenat Simjee |
Trending Searches 1) SRD Status Check 2) Wordle 3) Climate Change 4) Monkey Pox 5) Ukraine |
Trending Sport 1) world cup 2022 fixtures 2) AFCON 3) banyana banyana 4) Australian Open 5) Kaizer chiefs vs Amazulu |
Which trend did you think was part of this list, but for some reason, didn’t reach the top 5 of its category, share on the comment section below.
