What You Wanted to Know About in 2017, According to Google As the year draws to close, here's a look back at the people and events that captured our curiosity.
By Nina Zipkin
With the holidays upon us, now is prime time to take stock of 2017. With Google's annual release of its most searched-for terms, we can see how the year took shape based on our biggest questions.
On the consumer front in the U.S., the most searched-for car brand was Ford and the tech that people wanted to know most about was Apple's iPhone 8. The most searched for food item was Starbucks' viral Unicorn Frappuccino and how many calories it contained.
Related: How Google Uses People Analytics to Create a Great Workplace
From an entrepreneurial standpoint, it would seem that the makers of any and all things related to August's solar eclipse and companies who sell fidget spinners had a pretty good year.
The top 10 searches of the year in the United States were as follows:
- Hurricane Irma
- Matt Lauer
- Tom Petty
- Super Bowl
- Las Vegas shooting
- Mayweather vs McGregor fight
- Solar eclipse
- Hurricane Harvey
- Aaron Hernandez
- Fidget Spinner
Perhaps among the most illustrative of the roller coaster that was the 2017 news cycle was the top 10 "What is?" queries, which included net neutrality, fidget spinners and an inscrutable tweet from President Donald Trump.
- What is DACA?
- What is Bitcoin?
- What is a solar eclipse?
- What is ANTIFA?
- What is net neutrality?
- What is covfefe?
- What is the antikythera mechanism?
- What is a fidget spinner?
- What is the Paris Climate Agreement?
- What is a hurricane?
And Google also shared the 10 things that people wanted to learn how to do in 2017, with slime and the solar eclipse at the top of the list.
- How to make slime
- How to make solar eclipse glasses
- How to watch the solar eclipse
- How to watch Mayweather vs McGregor
- How to buy Bitcoin
- How to freeze your credit
- How to solve a rubix cube
- How to make a fidget spinner
- How to cook a turkey in the oven
- How to screen record
