Football one, elections nil
Windows are the eyes into the soul, so the expression goes. It’s poetic, but untrue, of course. What is perhaps a little more defensible is that Google Search queries are a window into, if not the soul, then at least the psyche of the nation. As a result, Google’s annual ritual of releasing the most popular search queries in each country offers a fascinating glance into what had been on people’s minds in the last 12 months.
Of course, it’s not a scientific study, and self-selecting both in terms of the people doing the searching and the kinds of questions asked. While people do sometimes throw wild cards in, questions posed to search engines tend to be of a practical, fact-finding nature. After all, questions like ‘do my children love me’ and ‘is my job meaningful’ tend to result in a wall of Quora results, and no-one wants that. Perhaps there is a use for artificial intelligence (AI) after all…
So what did the Irish want to know in 2024?
Unsurprisingly, in a year when Ireland, Britain, France, the EU parliament, India and, of course, the US, went to the polls, a lot of people wanted to know about politics.
The US election was the second most searched term in Ireland overall, and Donald Trump was the tenth. Kamala Harriswas in seventh, followed by Joe Biden in eighth.
Closer to home, ‘how to register to vote’ was the most searched ‘How-To’ question, which, depending on how you look at it, is either heartening or alarming given it was the year of a general election.
Apparently, ‘what is the referendum about’ featured on the ‘What-Is’ list, presumably in relation to the 39th Amendment of the Constitution (The Family) Bill. Sadly, there is no specific list of ‘Really?-Was-that-this-year?-It-feels-like-aeons-ago’.
But if politics, in the form of the slow motion car crash that is the US election, was second overall, what came first? Well, assuming you don’t consider politics to be a game, sport was the ‘biglyist’ of all.
The Paris Olympics got a look in, coming fifth, but as we all know, aside from controversies and slagging matches (step forward breakdancing), we only really care about the running and jumping events. And maybe the punching ones.
The most searched topic of all, then, was the Euros. For readers outside Europe I could clarify that that is the football, not the European Union parliamentary elections (no-one cares about those).
Superannuated rock group Oasis came in at sixth place overall, and it would definitely be fair to say that at least half of that was people screaming into the void about ticket prices. Maybe.
The most popular searches relating to film and television programmes were largely about a load of radioactive waste products, so no change there.
Top in tech was Connections, which is presumably the word game published by the New York Times. Chalk that one up to bored office workers? International tat distributor Temu came second, while international tat distributor X (formerly Twitter) came third, but for my money the placement of Crowdstrike in sixth position is the most interesting as it underscores the significance of the outage. It takes a lot to get onto a list populated by searches for retailers, new phones and the outrage of the day.
What does all this tell us about Ireland and the Irish in 2024? I have no idea, but it tells me one thing at least: given that, despite drastically cutting back on time spent online (a measure implemented to preserve my sanity) all of the top events – the football, the Olympics, sundry elections, that awful three-chord band – somehow penetrated my consciousness. I’m not as out of touch as I thought I was. Hopefully the same is true for you. Happy Christmas, and see you in the future year of 2025, when, if AI search really does take off, the void may scream back.
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