Google's Trending Topics 2012

DAILY DOT COM - Google released its 2012 list of top search terms on Wednesday, December 12.  Google’s 12th annual Year-End Zeitgeist provides a revealing and sometimes surprising look at the people, places and topics that sent the world searching for answers this past year.

Zeitgeist , which is German for spirit of the times, is Google’s yearly analysis of the billions of searches performed throughout the year.  It uses data from a number of sources while filtering out span and repeat queries –to build more than 800 top-ten lists across pop culture, sports, politics and news.  These lists show the trending queries that had the highest amount of traffic over a sustained period in 2012 as compared to 2011, as well as search terms that were the highest ranked search queries of the year.

Whitney Houston was the top trending search of 2012.  People around the globe searched by and large for news about the pop star's accidental drowning just before she was to perform at a Grammy Awards party in February.

Korean rapper PSY's "Gangnam Style" music video "trotted" into second spot on the list.  The hilariously silly video is approaching a billion views on YouTube.

Superstorm Sandy was third.  The damaging storm knocked out power and flooded parts of the East Coast --all in the midst of a U.S. presidential campaign.

The next biggest trending searches around the globe were a pair of threes: the iPad 3 tablet from Apple and Diablo 3, a popular video game.