Google's Top Searches of 2018: Dead Celebrities, World Cup, and Meghan Markle
*By Carlo Versano*
What do Stan Lee, Logan Paul, and the royal wedding have in common?
They were among the most Googled terms of 2018.
Justin Burr, the search trends expert at Google, gave Cheddar some insight into the top Google trends of the year.
Google searches can provide one of the more unvarnished looks into our own psyches ーand the annual compendium of what we searched for often does a better job of capturing a moment in time, or particular mood, than any poll or survey.
As is often the case, celebrity deaths made up the bulk of the top Google searches of 2018, Burr said. Of the top 10 searches this year, seven were for celebrities who had died: Avicii, Mac Miller, Stan Lee, Anthony Bourdain, XXXTentacion, Kate Spade, and Stephen Hawking. The other three: "Black Panther," Meghan Markle, and the World Cup. (The World Cup won the distinction of being the top search in both the U.S. and around the world.)
"People always go to Google when there are deaths," Burr said, "to understand who they were and what they did."
In news searches, the Cup once again reigned supreme, followed by Hurricane Florence, the Mega Millions jackpot, the royal wedding, and election results.
Burr said Google saw a huge spike in queries for "how to vote" leading up to the midterm election, which would jibe with the results ー which showed turnout was at a 50-year high.
In terms of individuals, the most-searched names: Meghan Markle (again), Demi Lovato, Sylvester Stallone, Logan Paul, and Khloé Kardashian. Tristan Thompson was the most-searched athlete, and the Cleveland Cavaliers was the most-searched sports team.
"There's always tangential relations between the different search results," Burr noted.
See more of the top trends of the year at [google.com/2018](google.com/2018).
Wall Street was quiet early following a lackluster session a day earlier as markets await U.S. inflation data and high-profile corporate earnings reports later in the week.
The World Economic Forum says false and misleading information supercharged with cutting-edge artificial intelligence is the top immediate risk to the global economy.
CES 2024 starts this week in Las Vegas. It's set to feature swaths of the latest advances and gadgets across personal tech, transportation, health care, sustainability and more. Here's a list of the coolest announcements so far.
Astronauts will have to wait until next year before flying to the moon and another few years before landing on it. NASA on Tuesday announced the latest round of delays in its Artemis moon-landing program.
The Biden administration has enacted a new labor rule that aims to prevent the misclassification of workers as independent contractors. The labor department rule going into effect Tuesday replaces a scrapped Trump-era standard that lowered the bar for classifying employees as contractors
The KC-46 was to be the ideal candidate for a fixed-price development program. Instead, it has cost Boeing billions, and made industry wary of such deals.
Dave Long, CEO and Co-Founder of Orangetheory Fitness joins Cheddar to chat trends in the industry for 2024. He updates us on the company's plans to expand and what the state of the economy has meant for business.
One of the world's largest renewable energy developers will be getting hundreds of wind turbines from General Electric spinoff GE Vernova as part of a record equipment order and long-term service deal.
