The wait for the Zeitgeist 2012 – Year In Review is over!

There are many reports published each year to record the global search trends, popular people and events but Google’s Zeitgeist report is the most popular.

What were people searching for in 2012?
Thankfully, the claustrophobic and almost paranoid searching of celebrities who have very little to offer to society or personal relationships of adolescent actors are not what the world searched for and not what trended through the year. Instead, issues that matter and global events that are worth a reckoning had been hailed by Internet users from around the world.

Whitney Houston’s sad demise, Hurricane Sandy and the aftermath, relief related queries and the Presidential Election are among the popular search trends of 2012 along with a horde of personalities who made us proud, global events that celebrated life, quaint achievements ala the Stratosphere Jump and also some fun from South East Asia, the Gangnam Style.

There are two types of lists compiled in Zeitgeist:

• Trending Searches: What was hot and unique to this year? The “trending” queries are the searches that had the highest amount of traffic over a sustained period in 2012 as compared to 2011.
• Most Searched: What topped Google’s charts? The “most searched” queries are simply the most popular terms for 2012, ranked in order by volume of searches.

For this exercise, lets just concentrate on on “trending searches” otherwise we could be here all day.
Here is a quick list of the top 10 US trending searches

1. Whitney Houston
2. Hurricane Sandy
3. Election 2012
4. Hunger Games
5. Jeremy Lin
6. Olympics 2012
7. Amanda Todd
8. Gangnam Style
9. Michael Clarke Duncan
10. Kony 2012

The Trending People in 2012 include

1. Whitney Houston
2. Jeremy Lin
3. Amanda Todd
4. Michael Clark Duncan
5. Kate Middleton
6. One Direction
7. Morgan Freeman
8. Peyton Manning
9. Joe Paterno
10. Paul Ryan

The Trending Events in 2012 were

1. Hurricane Sandy
2. Presidential Election
3. Super Bowl
4. Olympics
5. UEFA Euro 2012
6. Kony Movement
7. SOPA Protest
8. Aurora Shooting
9. Trayvon Martin Case
10. Hurricane Isaac

Across the world, the searches weren’t that much different, the Global Trending Searches in 2012 were:

1. Whitney Houston
2. Gangnam Style
3. Hurricane Sandy
4. iPad 3
5. Diablo 3
6. Kate Middleton
7. Olympics 2012
8. Amanda Todd
9. Michael Clarke Duncan
10. BBB12

The video below gives a great visual overview of what we searched for in 2012.