We are entering the age of the now. Google released its Year in Search yesterday, showcasing the trends and stories that caught our eye this year -- or at least our mouse clicks. As my colleague Caitlin Dewey wrote yesterday, "the sum total of your Google search history tells an intimate story not only about who you are, but what you want and what you fear."

As it's the season for collective stock-taking in The Year that Was, the Google data got me thinking: are we more or less interested in 2014 than in previous years? Or, in search terms: have we searched for "2014" more or less often than we searched for other years in the past?

Google's trends data can answer that question. As it turns out, there's a regular pattern of interest in any given year -- searches for "2014" are plotted above. Interest in any given year starts to ramp up slowly in roughly January of the previous year -- you can see this when I add "2015" to the chart.

Interest peaks in the summer, usually around a big international sporting event -- this year it was the World Cup, while in 2012 it was the summer Olympics. And it winds down shortly thereafter. But years cast a long narrow search shadow, as people continue to search for them long after they've passed.

Adding "2013" to the chart above, you can see this in action. September marks the time of year when interest in the following year overtakes interest in the previous one -- this makes sense when you consider the structure of the academic year.

And judging by past years, "2015" will overtake "2014" right around the first few days of January -- just as you'd expect. Finally, let's put every year back to 2004 on the same chart:

The big international sporting events account for most of the sharp peaks above, as you'd expect -- if it's 2012 and you want info on the current Olympics, you're going to search for "2012 Olympics" rather than plain old "Olympics."

Another interesting tidbit -- U.S. presidential elections barely register on the global search stage. You can see a little bit of a bump near year's end in 2012 and 2008, but not much. Sharp-eyed readers will notice a small spike in searches for "2012" near the end of 2009 -- that's when 2012 the movie came out, which I am ashamed to admit I saw in the theater.

The main trend, though, is of growing interest in whatever the current year happens to be. This isn't simply a function of more search traffic in general -- these numbers are represented as a share of all search traffic in any given period. What they show is that people worldwide were nearly twice as likely to search for "2014" in 2014 as they were to search for "2004" in 2004. But why?

Here's my hunch, and I hope you'll excuse me if I get a little TED-talky: we're spending more and more of our online lives on social media, where the "here and now" is of paramount importance. That shift took place precisely over the 2004-2014 time window in the chart above: in 2004 there were only a million people on Facebook. "Social media" wasn't even a thing then (literally - look at the chart of interest in "social media" below!).

Today, billions of us are connected to any number of social networks that keep us plugged in to what's happening in real-time. Twitter is the most obvious example of this. And with that shift comes more interest in the present -- even the current year. Which means I'm going to be appending "2014" to more of my searches to make sure I'm getting fresh information.

If I'm, say, looking for a good disaster movie, I'm going to Google "best disaster movie 2014," not simply "best disaster movie." Or "best holiday recipes of 2014," or "do people still say YOLO in 2014," or "where to buy jorts in 2014." You get the picture: who wants musty old information from 2007? Not this guy, and I'm willing to wager not most of you either.

In other words, the here and now matters more than ever. To illustrate this I'll leave you with one final chart: worldwide Google searches for "now."