This year's trending searches show growing interest in local celebrities and events, with seven of the top 10 trending search terms being local, in contrast to fewer than half last year. South Africans are also increasingly using search to find local businesses – the ‘near me’ search list shows what types of businesses South Africans look for in their neighbourhoods and highlights the importance of these (often small) businesses being online and findable.
To see more information about Google’s Year in Search across the globe and to watch our annual video, click here.
This information is gleaned from data collated by Google based on what South Africans have been searching for and asking Google this year. Google processes more than 40,000 search queries every second. This translates to more than a billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide. Live Google search trends data is available here.
