Tag: zeitgeist

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.