The death of a musical legend, a collapse in the world’s largest cryptocurrency, an ongoing disease outbreak, and the emergence of a sporting superstar dominated South African Google searches this week.

On Monday, the world learned of the sudden death of Cranberries lead singer Dolores O'Riordan. The 46-year-old singer received tributes from peers, celebrities, and millions of ordinary fans around the globe. As people sought to find out more about the life and death of the Irish artist, South Africans searched her name more than 50 000 times.

On Tuesday meanwhile, South Africans were again searching for “Listeriosis” (50 000+ searches). To date, 67 people are known to have died from the disease, with the outbreak potentially being the world’s worst.

Also on Tuesday, interest spiked in Bitcoin (50 000+ searchers) as the price of the cryptocurrency fell dramatically, plummeting 14% amid fears of crackdowns by regulators.

On Wednesday, cricketer Lungi Ngidi topped search rankings (10 000+ searches) as his man-of-the-match performance helped South Africa wrap up the test series against India. That day also saw 10 000+ searches for Hoerskool Overvaal, an Afrikaans school where the Gauteng Education Department tried to place 55 English-speaking learners, and Kim Kardashian, who announced the birth of a third child, this one by surrogate.

Other prominent searches for the week included “Manchester United” (20 000+ searches) following their 3-0 defeat of Stoke City, “Unisa Online Application” (10 000+ searches), “Siam Lee” (10 000+ searches) and “Australian Open” (10 000+ searches).  

Google processes more than 40 000+ search queries every second. This translates to more than a billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide. Google trends data is updated hourly and is available on https://www.google.co.za/trends.

Search trends in South Africa tend to be news and sports-driven. People search for things they hear or see on the news, and sports search terms trend several times a week, on average, every week.