With Microsoft’s Bing and Yahoo announcing the year’s top topics people were searching for in the last few days, Google released their annual Zeitgeist (German for "spirit of the times") Search Trends for both global and local searches yesterday.

It seems South Africans’ love of social networking has come out tops, with “facebook” being the most popular search term locally, and “facebook login” the fastest rising for 2009. Strangely enough “yahoo” was the second most searched word on Google, with “yahoo mail” actually ranking above “gmail.com” in the fastest rising category. Even more peculiar was that people googled Google so much that it was the seventh most popular search term of the year.

Online, sport mad South Africans requested info on the Super 14 rugby more than on the IPL, Cape Argus or the Confederations Cup, while Nelson Mandela proved more popular than Jacob Zuma on the political front. DJ Sbu from YFM was king of the celebs, beating out socialite Khanyi Mbau and Oscar winner Charlize Theron in second and third place respectively.

Similarly to Bing’s and Yahoo\'s most popular search, “Michael Jackson” was also the fastest rising search term globally on Google. Social media claimed the next three spots with “facebook” ranking number two, “tuenti”, the so-called Spanish Facebook in at number three and “twitter” claiming fourth spot.

Here are the top 10 most popular searches on Google for South Africa:

1. facebook  
2. yahoo
3. games
4. lyrics
5. jobs
6. gumtree
7. google
8. gmail
9. news
10. absa

For all the SA results go here, and for the global Zeitgeist results click here.