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Google Zeitgeist 2008 for South Africa

For those of you interested in seeing what South Africans search for, here’s the Google Zeitgeist 2008 for South Africa. It’s actually quite boring in some places. I mean who googles for yahoo? Or googling for facebook? Or the worst – googling for google? An indication perhaps of immaturity in South African search usage? I thought so, until I looked at some of the US and UK trends, and we’re not that far away from them…

Some of the most popular searches included Load Shedding and of course the FIFA 2010 World Cup. This year’s Zeitgeist also reflects important South African concerns like Xenophobia, along with rising interest in new developments like the Gautrain. South Africans were keen to stay up to date on politics, with high volumes of searches around Thabo Mbeki’s resignation, and around international events like the elections in the USA and Zimbabwe. Take a look below to get sense of the Zeitgeist, or spirit of the times, in South Africa for 2008.

Fastest Rising

  1. gumtree
  2. facebook
  3. lotto
  4. eskom
  5. youtube
  6. beeld
  7. news 24
  8. yahoo mail
  9. chuck norris
  10. beijing olympics

Most Popular

  1. facebook
  2. cape times
  3. games
  4. map
  5. yahoo
  6. news
  7. jobs
  8. google
  9. gmail
  10. pictures

Top Politicians

  1. jacob zuma
  2. thabo mbeki
  3. trevor manuel
  4. julius malema
  5. kgalema motlanthe
  6. helen zille
  7. fikile mbalula
  8. terror lekota
  9. mbhazima shilowa
  10. mongosuthu buthelezi

Top Newsworthy

  1. load shedding
  2. fifa 2010 world cup
  3. beijing olympics
  4. barack obama
  5. global warming
  6. euro 2008
  7. xenophobia
  8. adt (home and office security service)
  9. zimbabwe election
  10. cope (congress of the people

    11. political party)

Top Sports Teams

  1. the sharks
  2. kaizer chiefs
  3. the lions
  4. mamelodi sundowns
  5. bafana bafana
  6. orlando pirates
  7. stormers
  8. the springboks
  9. cheetahs
  10. proteas

Top Local Celebs

  1. dj sbu
  2. dj fresh
  3. dj cleo
  4. kelly khumalo
  5. danny k
  6. ryk neethling
  7. khanyi mbau
  8. connie ferguson
  9. gareth cliff
  10. loyiso bala

One reply on “Google Zeitgeist 2008 for South Africa”

Hmm.. it seems that everyone’s leaving out sites like youporn and redtube: massive free online porn sites that pull millions of uniques a month.

South Africans are also fast cottoning onto the streaming video business. Porn being at the top of the list.

What would be interesting, rather than a couple lists of google searches, would be the same list, over say, the last ten years!

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