What did you Google in 2023? Barbie, Israel war in Gaza among year's top internet searches

AP , Monday 11 Dec 2023

Your Google search history for 2023 has arrived. Well, actually, the world's. On Monday, the California-based tech giant released its “Year in Search,” a roundup of 2023’s top global queries, ranging from unforgettable pop culture moments (hello, Barbenheimer ), to the loss of beloved figures and tragic news carrying worldwide repercussions.

MAIN
This photograph taken in Toulouse, southwestern France, on July 18, 2023 shows screens displaying the logos of Bard AI, a conversational artificial intelligence software application developed by Google. Google on December 6, 2023 infused its Bard chatbot with a new-generation artificial intelligence model called Gemini, which it touts as being able to reason better than ChatGPT and other rivals. AFP

 

The ongoing Israeli war on Gaza topped news trends in 2023, per Google's global data, followed by queries related to the Titanic-bound submersible that imploded in June, as well as February's devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria.

Damar Hamlin was Google's top trending person on search this year.

A safety with the NFL's Buffalo Bills, Hamlin experienced a near-death cardiac arrest on the field during a January game but has since completed a celebrated comeback.

Actor Jeremy Renner, who survived a serious snowplough accident at the start of 2023, followed.

Meanwhile, the late Matthew Perry and Tina Turner led search trends among notable individuals who passed away.

In the world of entertainment, “Barbie” dominated Google search's movie trends this year — followed by Barbenheimer co-pilot “Oppenheimer” and Indian thriller "Jawan."

In TV, “The Last of Us,” “Wednesday” and “Ginny and Georgia” were the top three trending shows in 2023.

Yoasobi's "アイドル (Idol)" was Google's top trending song on search. Jason Aldean's “Try That In A Small Town” — which soared in the charts after controversy this summer — and Shakira and Bizarrap's “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53” followed.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg for Google's 2023 global search trends. Bibimbap was the top trending recipe.

Inter Miami CF, the new home of Argentine soccer superstar Lionel Messi, led Google's sports teams trends.

And in the U.S. specifically, many consumers spent 2023 asking why eggs, Taylor Swift tickets, and sriracha bottles were so expensive — while “rizz” (recently named Oxford’s word of the year ) was a frontrunner for trending slang definition inquires.

You can find more data, including country-specific lists and trends from years past, on Google's “Year in Search” archive.

The company says it collected its 2023 search results from Jan. 1 through Nov. 27 of this year.

Google isn't the only one to publish annual data as 2023 draws to a close — and from dictionary lookups to music streams, chances are, you've probably seen other lists recapping online activity this year. Last week, for example, Wikipedia released its year-end list of most-viewed entries — with its article about ChatGPT leading the pack.

To mark the search engine's 25th birthday, Google also released top search data “of all time” across various specific categories.

Since 2004 (when the company's trends data first became available globally), the most-Googled Grammy winner of all time has been Beyoncé, for example, while Portuguese soccer great Cristiano Ronaldo is the highest-searched athlete, and the most-searched movie or TV cast is “Harry Potter.”

Short link: