Google's annual Zeitgeist reveals that South Africans are intrigued by Apple products, OLX was the most searched for entity this year, and top people searches included late singer Whitney Houston, local athlete Caster Semenya and Soweto-born actress Khanyi Mbau.
These, and others, are trends that Google disclosed in its Zeitgeist 2012, a year in search. Google Zeitgeist is a look at 2012 through the collective eyes of the world on the Web. Available by country, the South African stats offer perspective on this year's major events and hottest trends for South African Internet users.
South Africans looked to the World Wide Web to answer the ever-elusive question "What is love?" and when it comes to finding out "how to" local Internet users primarily searched for "How to kiss".
Local minds were also inquisitive about the US's fate during the dawn of Hurricane Sandy and this year's major international sporting event, the London Olympics.
The dance track that has captured the attention of the planet and worked its way into pop culture history - Gangnam Style - comes in at number four in the overall trending searches.
South Africans kept it largely local, with searches for short-lived airline Velvet Sky coming in at sixth place. Caster Semenya won a different kind of (online) medal by coming in as the fastest trending sportsperson of the year, followed closely by swimming hero Chad le Clos.
Tech trends
In the technology world, Apple's iPad 3 captured SA's imagination, coming in 10th overall, and grabbing first place on the top gadgets list. In fact, Apple claimed four of the 10 spots in the top trending gadgets and phones list, with Samsung, Nokia and BlackBerry each claiming two.
South Africans' most asked "What is" in technology question concerned ICT, followed by Android, Internet, Facebook and Instagram - with GIS, WiFi, URL, spam and 3G filling the latter spots.
Local tech brands Mxit and Vodacom make the top 10 list of local brands searched for, coming in at fourth and ninth place, respectively.
Spirit of the times
The "Zeitgeist" - meaning "the spirit of the times" - is conducted by Google at the end of each year.
According to Google, this year saw the 12th annual Google Year-End Zeitgeist on google.com/zeitgeist. "Our site showcases over 800 top-10 lists across pop culture, sports, music, politics, news, and more. It's global, spanning over 50 countries. You can check out global search trends, compare terms using interactive data visualisations, and watch the annual Zeitgeist video."
Google says the lists and data visualisations were created using a combination of tools that provide insight into global, regional, past and present search trends in aggregate.
"Much of the data was informed by Google Trends, a publicly available tool that displays relative search volume across geographies, time periods and queries. We also used internal tools that allow us to do some more complex analysis, such as combining country data from across the European Union. We've also filtered out spam, irrelevant queries and repeated queries so our lists can best reflect the spirit of the times."
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