For search lovers, the announcement of Google's year-end Zeitgeist - a regular feature on its annual calendar since 2001 - is an eagerly anticipated event. The list reveals "the sign of the times" - i.e., the most popular searches conducted on Google throughout the year - and tends to act as a barometer of our interests and pursuits over the past 12 months.Mountain View is yet to release its global Zeitgeist for 2008 but if you're looking for an appetite whetter, this year's hottest search topics in Australia and New Zealand have been announced. The top ten Australian searches for the year aren't much to look at: "games" tops the list, while "Sydney", "YouTube", "MySpace", "Facebook" and - that's right - "Google" follow behind.
But, as with Google's global Zeitgeist, it's when the list gets broken down into categories that it becomes really interesting. The fastest rising Australian search term this year was "iPhone" - a distinct overlap with last year's global fastest rising search term. The most searched for TV shows included Big Brother, The Simpsons and Heroes, while the most searched for movie was perhaps unsurprisingly Baz Luhrmann's "Australia", with The Dark Knight pipping Indiana Jones to second place. Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt also lost out to Australian swimmer Stephanie Rice in the top ten most popular Olympic-related searches.
However, unlike Yahoo!'s top searches for 2008 - in which Britney Spears and World Wrestling Entertainment beat American president-elect Barack Obama to the top positions in the US - Obama came first in the top ten most searched for celebrities down under, with Britney relegated to fifth place.
The top searches on google.co.nz this year aren't too different to those in Australia, with "games" once again topping the list. However, the fastest rising searches of 2008 in New Zealand do show some significant differences; "iPhone" doesn't even get a look in, with "Olympics" in first. Other variants include the "Large Hadron Collider" and the "Jonas Brothers".
In an overlap with one of Yahoo!'s hot trends for 2008, Aussie actor Health Ledger was the most searched for death this year, while Britney took another drop to sixth place in the most popular celebrity searches in New Zealand. Obama wasn't top of this list either - instead it was US R&B heartthrob Chris Brown.
So can Australia and New Zealand's most popular searches give us an indication of what's to come from the Google Zeitgeist for 2008? Obama is certain to be a prevalent figure, as is former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. And if Google's Zeitgeist for 2007 was anything to go by, we can certainly expect the search engine to find a new and innovative way of presenting its year-end report to its legions of followers. Watch this space for more news on the Google Zeitgeist for 2008 - or, if you're feeling impatient, satisfy your daily appetite for statistics with Google Trends.
