These Were The Top 10 Most Popular Searches On Google In 2014

Each year, Google releases a list of the topics we’ve collectively searched for the most over the past 12 months. Each year, I try and see how many I can guess beforehand.

This year, I got about half. How many can you get? [Pro tip: remember, people generally search for depressing/scary stuff more than pretty much anything else.]

Google released two lists this year — one for US search trends, and one for worldwide search trends. The lists are mostly the same, with just a few differences.

US Trending Searches:

Global Trending Searches:

The two lists are strikingly similar, save for the global list leaning toward Conchita Wurst and the Sochi Olympics in place of Ferguson and Ukraine.

Interesting to note: this is the first year in a few where an Apple product didn’t make the cut. (2010 had iPad; 2011 featured both iPhone 5 and iPad 3; 2012 had iPad 3 again; 2013 had the iPhone 5S in spot #2)

Also of note: as far as I can recall, Flappy Bird is the first mobile app to crack Google’s top 10. Having a wildly successful app is one thing — but an app that becomes one of the most searched for things around the entire world? Achievement unlocked. (Google notes that 2048 and Flappy Bird, both one-man projects, beat out Destiny, the most expensive game ever developed.)

(Note: this list is based on year-versus-year search trends; it’s about how popular a topic is this year versus last, not raw frequency. If it were just raw frequency, Google says the most popular searches wouldn’t change much.)