Internet users in January were more interested in finding out about last year's Matric results, than SA's latest overseas cricket tournament, reveals Google.
Google Zeitgeist, a tool that provides insight into search trends, discovered that 'Matric results 2010' tops the list of fastest rising searches in SA from the past 30 days, while 'cricket SA' and 'cricket' claim third and fourth position respectively.
According to Google, education seems to be a focus for the New Year, with University of Johannesburg coming in sixth and Unisa featuring at eighth place.
The search engine giant says these results are indicative of the recent registration rush that saw students causing major traffic congestion at UJ's Kingsway campus.
'Career Junction' achieves seventh place on the list and 'Jobmail' takes the tenth spot. Google says this suggests that South Africans are flocking online looking for a new start in 2011.
Another major search trend includes the 'Golden Globes' as South African Internet surfers are turning to the Internet to get the latest movie and celebrity gossip. The YouTube video of Golden Globes host Ricky Gervais opening monologue at the ceremony has already received over four million views, notes Google.
The search engine giant says in a statement that Zeitgeist, which is German meaning 'spirit of the times', finds search trends based on billions of search queries made every year.
Google states: “We also have several tools that give insight into global, regional, past and present search trends. Google Zeitgeist tools can never be used to identify individual users because we rely on anonymised, aggregated counts of how often certain search queries occur over time.”
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