As we’re nearing the end of 2012 and time seems to fly by more rapidly with each year, Google released their annual Zeitgeist report to show an overview of the most popular searches in the past year. While you could argue that these trends are rife with pop culture fluff
– they most certainly are – or that competing views of the world from Twitter or Facebook are more relevant in the era of social media, I still checked some of the country-level trends. It’s somewhat disconcerting to see ‘Hamburger’ take the second spot in the ‘Foods’ category in France – although all the other places are held by genuine French cuisine (the more obscure the name, the more genuine the dish, that’s my rule at least).
For Romania, there are fewer categories – the number varies from country to country, probably depending on the search volume for each. Some of the top search terms were quite obvious, others less so:
- The general searches reveal a huge interest for fun and entertainment (somewhat expected) and for the results of the high-school exams (hmm…). It’s like all the hottest search terms come from teens and young adults, which on second thought it’s not all that surprising – more free time on their hands, I guess…
- The ‘People’ section is very interesting: besides Whitney Houston and a famous Romanian boxer, now living in Canada, we have a winner of a top TV show – entertainment again – and two leading political figures: a former prime-minister, former presidential candidate, former party leader, now turner famous inmate blogger, and the current president, who became increasingly unpopular during the long crisis and barely survived a referendum to have him removed from office.
- ‘Songs’: pop culture fluff all around! Mostly Romanian, including this year’s entry to the Eurovision Song Contest, but ‘Gangnam Style’ manages to sneak up in the top 5 as well.
- ‘TV Shows’ lists only local shows; the first three from one network (Pro TV), the remaining two from a competitor (Antena 1). Someone has an audience problem here…
- The ‘Movies’ on the other hand are all foreign, not really surprising since Romania productions are not very good at gathering audiences and making money, despite winning international prizes.
- The ‘How to…’ section reveals a weird interest for knitting – I strongly doubt this is the same audience from the first section…
- And, last but not least, a trend list for Romania wouldn’t be complete without ‘Football’! The preferences here have remained very steady over time, with the two most popular football clubs from the capital still making headlines, despite larger, international names landing in the top trends.
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