In the list of the most wanted politicians, the failed US presidential candidate Kamala Harris, incumbent Joe Biden and the election winner Donald Trump are on the podium. Only behind them are the first Germans, the former Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner and the resigned SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert.
The general search terms are focused on sport, with the European Football and Handball Championships in first and second place, followed by the US election and another athlete – the footballer Franz Beckenbauer, who died in January. Beckenbauer also tops Google’s separate list of most searched deceased personalities, followed by boy band One Direction singer Liam Payne and Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny.
There was also a lot of search for information about the Islamist-motivated attack on a city festival in Solingen as well as the farmers’ protests that made headlines across Europe for weeks in the spring. Internet users were also interested in the Dubai chocolate phenomenon.
Google also evaluated detailed questions from Internet users. The so-called why questions included the question “Why are the farmers on strike?” in first place, followed by “Why is Cora out?”, which apparently referred to Cora Schumacher’s departure from the RTL jungle camp. The third most common why question was “Why was Lindner fired?”
The What questions ended up being “What is a Talahon?” in first place. One of the top search results here is a Wikipedia article that says talahon is a catchphrase for people with stereotypical characteristics or behavior, “most often referring to young men with an Arab immigrant background.” The most frequently asked how question, however, was about the age of showmaster Raab.
To create the statistics, Google said it evaluated billions of search queries that users made over the course of the year that ended. The company emphasized that these are not terms that were most searched for, but rather so-called trending searches. “These are search terms that have seen the highest percentage increase in search interest in a given period compared to the same period the year before,” it said.
