As 2018 comes to an end, it's a great time for a reflection and to take a look at what has happened this year. Though it can be a shitty, weird or bad year, it's still good to look back at all the conversations that have happened this year.
One easy way is to look at is by examining the trending searches this year versus 2017 on Google Trends. That is, let's not look at the top searches this year (they're mostly the same every year), but the one that happened more this year versus last year i.e. rising searches.
I'll leverage a bit of Python and Google Sheets to automate the work of gathering the data. If you're not interested on the Methodology or the Python code, please jump straight to the results.
There are two ways to look at the rising searches, by category or by keywords.
Google Trends comes with an option to select categories, but you still need to perform a keyword search first. In the snapshot below, the keyword is "political correctness", a hot topic in 2018.
For my analysis, I'll ignore the category option and just perform several short keyword searches, such as:
With these short, broad-capturing keywords, we'll be able to examine the related searches that were trending in 2018 versus 2017. For example, we'll discover what "how to" searches people have made and what people have watched, listened or streamed.
At the same time, I'll be leveraging several tricks on Google Trends to narrow down my analysis to only relevant terms (i.e. excluding keywords). This is to prevent searches like "how to train your dragon" dominate the result for "how to".
Finally, I'll only do this analysis for several countries where English is the main language of search and countries which I'm familiar with.
Though Google is smart enough to identify related searches in other languages even if I'm using an English keyword, I'm not able to verify if the result is correct nor do exclusion in the case where the result is wrong.
If you would like me to run an analysis of other countries & regions, please let me know in the comments section below.
I'll be utilising the pytrends package for this task. Firstly, we need to initialise the module.
from pytrends.request import TrendReq
trend = TrendReq(hl = 'en-us')
countries = ['US', 'GB', 'SG', 'MY', 'IN', 'PH']
Above you can see the 6 countries that I will run the analysis on. It needs to follow the ISO Alpha-2 country code naming convention.
Next comes the dirty work. We'll need to send a "payload" by batches. The payload constitutes the searches we'll be doing on Google Trends including the options like country, timeframe and category.
Each payload can only carry 5 searches at a time, so my full code does this a few times. Below is the sample for one of the payloads:
trend.build_payload(['how to -dragon', 'what is', 'why', 'when is -2018 -2019', 'how -dragon'],
cat = 0,
timeframe = '2018-01-01 2018-12-27',
geo = country
)
related = trend.related_queries()
The "related" variable is a dictionary of dataframes containing the related queries. To extract the results, we use the term that we've defined as the key, then extract only the "rising" dataframe.
how_to = related['how to -dragon']['rising']
what_is = related['what is']['rising']
why = related['why']['rising']
when_is = related['when is -2018 -2019']['rising']
how = related['how -dragon']['rising']
As you can see, I did the "how" keyword twice ("how to" and "how"). That is so that I'm able to capture more searches for my analysis. Hence, you can expect that the full code is quite messy.
Do this a few times for several payloads, then loop it for all the six countries, and finally export it to Google Sheets.
Here are the results, summarised.
The results below are filtered to only the meaningful ones i.e. not contaminated by inconsequential searches such as song titles or books with "who", "best" or "worst" in it. I've also removed searches containing year "2018" and "2019" as those obviously will be higher than in 2017, unless if they're meaningful (e.g. world cup 2018).
Note that if I have removed some category or root keywords that have yielded no relevant or significant results for certain countries e.g. India has no "listen" category as it consisted mostly of the song "listen to my heartbeat" and "listen up now listen to us".
Starting from the United States of America, below are the top rising searches for 2018 by the keyword categories.
How |
how to register to vote #registertovote |
What |
what is ligma |
Why |
why is 69 in jail |
When |
when is fortnite coming to android |
Who |
who created kirby |
Most |
most kills in fortnite |
Worst |
worst fortnite player |
Watch |
watch black panther online free |
Listen |
listen to my heart go ba dum |
Download |
fortnite mobile |
Stream |
logan paul vs ksi |
Read |
pbs great american read |
It's good to see that people do search on how to register to vote. The Democrats and celebrities did put a lot of effort into educating that.
There are some obvious ones like the prevalence of Fortnite that is very popular in the Western hemisphere, Logan Paul vs KSI live stream and FIFA World Cup 2018.
You might be able to understand some of these more than myself as I don't listen to mainstream celebrity news, hence I'm not sure why 69 is going to jail (who is 69?).
I just want to say that Apple should look into educating their new iPhone X users on how to use their phone's basic features. You'll see more iPhone X rising searches in "how to" in other countries as well.
Across the Atlantic, let's look at United Kingdom (the country code is GB).
How |
how did avicii die |
What |
what time is the royal wedding |
Why |
why did niall leave love island |
When |
when is the royal wedding |
Who |
who won the voice 2018 |
Most |
most kills in fortnite |
Worst |
royal wedding worst dressed |
Watch |
watch infinity war online |
Listen |
how to listen to youtube with screen off |
Download |
fortnite download mobile |
Stream |
ksi vs logan paul stream |
Similar to the US, the prevalence of Fortnite-related searches is clear. On top of that, there seems to be a lot of searches around sports events and reality TV.
Interestingly, the only top, rising searches related to Brexit is "what is the backstop". Some of the searches also point to highly popular news or memes in UK, such as "why you coming fast" and "mirror worst schools".
It seems that there are a number of people who want to do the floss dance too.
Moving further to the East, let's look at India.
How |
how to play pubg |
What |
what is pubg |
Why |
why south africa wear pink dress |
When |
when is oneplus 6 launch event scheduled to go live in india? |
Who |
who invented stock ticker |
Most |
most anticipated indian movies and shows |
Worst |
worst actor in bollywood |
Watch |
sonu ke titu sweety full movie watch online |
Download |
padmavat movie download |
Stream |
today pk |
Read |
an exciting book you read |
The "Read" category is an interesting one as the previous two countries did not yield many results. Though the results is a bit worrying.
As evident, Bollywood-related searches are prevalent in several categories while Fortnite is replaced by PUBG (PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds), another online multiplayer game.
An interesting one is the search for "worst bollywood actor" which stemmed from this piece of news. You'll see this later as we move further East.
There are several searches related to events in India, such as "what is section 377", "what is me too campaign" and "worst performing currency".
The "Who" category is interesting, though I can't make much meaning of it as I'm not very close to the news or developments in India. Please chime in if it's an interesting development.
Next, we head to Singapore.
How |
how to use paynow |
What |
this is what inequality looks like |
Why |
why are you running |
When |
when is world cup final |
Who |
who will win world cup 2018 |
Best |
aggron best moveset |
Most |
most subscribed youtuber |
Worst |
worst bollywood actor |
Watch |
watch yanxi palace |
Download |
download lagu karna su sayang (translation: download the song "karna su sayang ") |
Stream |
world cup streaming |
Read |
shokugeki no soma |
As a multi-cultural society, there are searches that seem to be related to other cultures or locations e.g. "download lagu karna su sayang" (Indonesia).
The "Who" category is actually pretty comprehensive with a lot of trending searches out of the top 5 e.g. "who won malaysia election", "who invented wifi" and "who is stephen hawking" (seriously?)
On the other hand, the "Download" category is quite thin. It's either there's nothing new that people are looking to download, or it's due to the strict anti-piracy legislation in Singapore. It's interesting to note that the highest rising "Download" search query is probably not done by Singaporeans.
The "Watch" category shows the Chinese drama fanaticism that took place in Singapore due to the apparently very awesome Yanxi Palace show. From a non-drama fan, I can't comment further.
Beyond the causeway, we move to Malaysia.
How |
how to repost instagram stories |
What |
what is icerd |
Why |
why anwar jailed |
When |
when is world cup final |
Who |
who will win world cup 2018 |
Best |
tempat makan best di kuala terengganu (best food places in Kuala Terengganu) |
Most |
most viewed youtube video in 24 hours |
Worst |
worst bollywood actor |
Watch |
watch world cup 2018 online |
Download |
918kiss download |
Stream |
mama 2018 live stream |
Read |
how to read deleted whatsapp message |
Just crossing the narrow strait to Malaysia, you can see more searches related to Politics and Food, the two most common topics of conversation for Malaysians.
The ground-breaking event of the 14th General Election that broke the dominant, 61-years stronghold of Barisan Nasional understandably dominated the search. Also, the rally to support racial discrimination (i.e. anti-anti-discrimination) is represented by the search "what is icerd".
I just want to point out the difference in "Download" category between Singapore and Malaysia. The "Download" category in Malaysia is denser as anti-piracy legislation, though present, is not very strongly enforced in Malaysia.
As you can see, Google is also showing Malay language searches, mainly cause Malay is a language that has borrowed quite a few English words.
If you try to do Japanese or Thai searches, the related searches containing non-Roman characters will appear too as Google is able to categorise related searches across languages. Again, we're not diving into those as I can't do the data cleanup like how I've done for these results.
Moving to our final country, Philippines.
How |
how to cheat in ros |
What |
what is train law |
Why |
why do men cheat |
When |
when is the draw of 6/58 |
Who |
who died in infinity war |
Best |
lesley best build |
Most |
what is most useful about mathematics for humankind |
Worst |
worst dressed abs cbn ball |
Watch |
watch meteor garden 2018 |
Download |
ros download |
Stream |
nba finals 2018 |
Read |
black clover manga |
Again, we see a very dense "Download" category. It seems to be mostly related to games, though I can't say for sure.
FIFA World Cup 2018 seems to be missing, replaced by NBA and boxing/MMA, likely due to the American influence on the culture and Manny Pacquiao.
Many of these searches seem really unique to the Philippines' culture. I find that the prevalence of manga in the read section interesting and similar to Malaysia, while I find the query about "what is most useful about mathematics for humankind" especially fascinating.
Many of the findings here are amusing and I recommend that you do a similar analysis yourself, as I've also omitted several searches which you might find interesting instead (e.g. "what's wrong secretary kim", a TV series", appeared heavily in the "What" category)
It's good to understand what's happening in other countries and it's a great way to start conversations with people from different cultures and backgrounds. Though there are differences, there are also similarities across cultures found in this analysis. Even within the differences, we can see similarities at its core.
Let's hope that 2019 brings something amazing to all of us and we'll do a similar analysis next year.
Image sources:
Country Icons published by Freepik
License: Flaticon Basic License
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