Mandela dominates Web in 2013

SA's beloved father of the nation Nelson Mandela topped Google searches both locally and worldwide this year.

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While online South Africans spent time checking out Apple products, navigating OLX classified ads and reading about the late Whitney Houston, athlete Caster Semenya and actress Khanyi Mbau last year - this year the country turned its eyes and ears predominantly to one man - father of the nation, Nelson Mandela.

This probably comes as no surprise and is according to search engine giant Google, which yesterday announced its annual Year-End Zeitgeist - a look at 2013 through the collective eyes of the world on the Web. The catalogue includes most-searched events and top trending searches from 72 countries, including SA.

Google's summation of a year of online searches reveals what South Africans were talking about, the hottest local trends, and the country's biggest moments and questions in 2013.

Julie Taylor, head of communications for Google Sub-Saharan Africa, says: "Every day around the world and across SA, we search. We want to find out more about people who are making an impact on the world, to learn about events that are making headlines, or just to settle a dinner-table dispute between friends.

"In our annual Year-End Zeitgeist, we reflect on the people, places, and moments that captured the world's attention throughout the year."

Topping the main online search list in SA this year are three melancholic topics:

Former president Mandela - affectionately known as Madiba - topped the list this year after news of his passing shook SA and the world at large. In fact, Nelson Mandela not only topped South African searches - the icon dominated the global engine too.

Coming in second is a tragic tale: the Valentine's Day shooting and consequent court appearance of local sports hero, Oscar Pistorius, also known as the Bladerunner. Pistorius' slain model girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, incidentally enters the top 10 list, at number nine.

Issue number three piquing South Africans' interest was the recent death of 'Fast and Furious' star Paul Walker.

The death of popular SABC radio and television anchor Vuyo Mbuli - who died of a pulmonary embolism at just 46 - also trended prominently this year, with the late presenter's name entering the list at number five.

In the world of technology, instant messaging apps and smartphones were a cauldron of discussion, with BBM for Android, WeChat and Samsung Galaxy S4 being the top three trending topics.

BlackBerry 10 and iOS 7 came in at four and five, with Bitstrips, iPhone 5S, Samsung Galaxy S3, XBox One and Fifa 14 completing the top 10, respectively.

Trending on top in the arena of online shopping this year - in a list of just five - were OLX, Zando, Spree, Computicket SA and Style 36, in that order.

The "Zeitgeist" - meaning "the spirit of the times" - is conducted by Google at the end of each year, with this year being the tech company's 13^th.

Google's Zeitgeist site features over 1 000 top 10 lists across pop culture, sports, music, politics, news, technology and more.

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."