By Mary Valentine, SMACC Graduate Assistant Analyst
2022 was one of the first years “back to normal” after the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. With all the wild happenings that have occurred in the past few years, it’s been difficult to remember if an event or trend happened this past year or back in the hibernation days of spring 2020. Google trends has laid out the most remarkable trends in the United States to remind us where we’ve been and what has happened in 2022.
According to Google Trends, the top overall searches in the U.S. were:
- Wordle
- Election results
- Betty White
- Queen Elizabeth
- Bob Saget
In addition to simply listing the top searches of 2022, users can dive deeper on Google Trends to discover when and how much people where searching specific topics.
The chart above is an index of the search term “Wordle,” the most searched term of 2022, on a scale of 1 to 100. In this index, a value of 100 represents the term’s peak popularity, a value of 50 represents half the popularity, and a value of 0 represents that there was not enough data for the term. The chart shows how “Wordle” hit its peak number of searches in the beginning of 2022 and while it became half as popular by summer, it overall remained stagnantly searched throughout the entirety of the year.
In addition, users can compare up to five search terms using Google Trends. The chart below depicts an index of the number one searched term “Wordle,” and number four searched term, “Queen Elizabeth.”
Comparisons between search terms can offer valuable information such as the time and frequency of popular topics. As we can see in the comparison of the two above search terms, “Queen Elizabeth” was never searched as popularly as “Wordle,” even in its peak time when the Queen was trending due to her death. The popularity of searching for “Queen Elizabeth” also dropped dramatically recently after the news of her death.
In addition to seeing when a search term was most popular, users can also see where a search term was most popular throughout the year. Google Trends has a feature that shows interest of a search term by state, metro area, or city. The values are again on a scale of 1 to 100, where 100 represents the location in which the search term in most popular as a fraction of total searches in that area. 50 represents a location where the search was half as popular, and 0 represents a location where there was not enough data for the search term.
The figure above from Google Trends shows that Vermont had the most searches for the term “Wordle” as a fraction of total searches in the area, followed by Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Connecticut. However, you may notice that smaller states have a higher number of interest. With this feature, a higher number represents a higher proportion of all search term, not a higher absolute search term count. Therefore, smaller states with a higher percentage of searches for a specific term will receive twice the score of a larger state where a lesser percentage of searches for that same specific term.
Finally, Google Trends reveals related topics and related queries (synonym for search terms) for any specific search term, shown below for the search term “Wordle.”
The lists of related topics and related queries derive from people who searched for “Wordle” in 2022, and what they also searched. The difference between the two above sets of lists are the words “top” and “rising” at the top of each list. The “top” topics and queries, shown in the first set of lists, represents the most popular topics and queries that users who searched “Wordle” also searched. The “rising” topics and queries, shown in the second set of lists, represents related topics and queries with the biggest increase in search frequency since the last time period (before 2022). The topics and queries marked as “breakout” had a tremendous increase, however that’s most likely due to the fact that these topics or queries are new and had very little, if any, prior searches.
Google Trends 2022 laid out trends separated into categories ranging from news, actors, definitions, games, passings, recipes, and so on. Not only does it showcase a compilation of trending searches over the year, it also provides data revealing when and where the searches were most popular during the year. This can be valuable information as we look back on a year full of various trending topics. Moving forward past 2022, Google Trends can be utilized throughout the year as new trending topics appear to visualize the concept on a broader index.