The word zeitgeist literally translates to "the spirit of the times", and who better to ask about what went down during this year than Google?

 

According to Google, top searches by users this year included terms such as the iPad, the video-based chatting site Chatroulette, the iPhone 4 and Facebook, while Justin Bieber was the most-searched person.

 

For South Africans 2010 was of course a big year, with the FIFA Soccer World Cup taking place on home soil. Google's searches reflected the importance of this global event, with the World Cup in South Africa being one of the most widely searched terms of the year. Other noteworthy international events were the winter Olympics in Canada, the Haiti earthquake, the oil spill in the gulf of Mexico and the Icelandic ash cloud.

 

Looking at the data for South Africa we see that while Justin Bieber dominated the fastest rising people searches, local artists such as Die Antwoord and Jack Parow were also highly searched for, with Jack Parow coming in third on the Fastest Rising People list. Controversial politician Julius Malema also made the lists for Fastest Rising People coming in at number five as well as for Fastest Rising News Searches, securing second place on the list.

 

Below is a list of the ten most popular searches in South Africa for this year. Comparing these to last year’s results, we see South African’s search habits remained largely the same. 

1. Facebook

2. Gmail

3. Google

4. Gumtree

5. Jobs

6. Yahoo

7. YouTube

8. Absa 

9. Games

10. News

 

For a laugh Google also revealed some of the most bizarre searches for 2010. These included, "Can a horse have OCD?", "Why are Americans afraid of dragons?" and "I wish I could speak whale." Google also put together a video for the year in review, which you can check out below.