Technology giant Google announced its 2023 annual hot search list on December 11, local time. Data shows that people around the world are looking for information about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that broke out on October 7. “The war between Israel and Gaza” topped the list of global news searches this year, while “what is Hamas,” “what is happening in Israel,” and “why Hamas launched attacks” ranked among the hot searches in the United States this year.
The implosion of the Titan submersible on a voyage to explore the wreckage of the Titanic triggered a massive global search and became a hot global news trend after the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and closely followed by the Turkey-Syria earthquake in February that killed more than 50,000 people.
In addition to major news events such as wars and disasters, the death of "Friends" star Matthew Perry and the movies "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" are also hot topics discussed around the world in 2023.
For years, Google’s annual Trending List has listed the search queries that saw a spike in traffic over a period of time compared to the previous year, reflecting the people, events, and works of art that piqued people’s curiosity and captured their attention that year.
This year’s search trends also reveal changes in language and communication styles. "Rizz" is the 2023 Oxford Dictionaries word of the year, essentially referring to a person's "charm" and becoming a popular slang search term on Google.
In the global recipe search list, bibimbap is the most popular recipe, and bagel, which is now popular in first- and second-tier cities in China, ranks fourth.
In sports, Inter Miami, the new club of Argentinian football superstar Lionel Messi, ranked first in searches, followed by the Los Angeles Lakers. French football star Kylian Mbappe ranks fourth among the most searched people and second among the most searched for athletes.
In addition to the global list, Google also compiles hot search rankings for some countries and regions. For example, "superconductor" is the third most searched news item in South Korea, referring to this summer's room-temperature superconducting farce in South Korea. The country’s international news hot searches include “the war between Israel and Gaza”, X (formerly Twitter), OpenAI and the Turkish earthquake. The Hangzhou Asian Games was selected into the top five most searched sports news in South Korea. The Korean drama "Black Glory" ranks first among TV dramas. The number one recipe is garlic kimchi, and the fifth is onion kimchi.
ChatGPT was selected as the most searched in French news list. The French list also specifically counts an artificial intelligence category. The hot search terms are "artificial intelligence creates images", "artificial intelligence reorganizes text", "artificial intelligence creates PowerPoint", "artificial intelligence for photography" and "artificial intelligence logo".
Germany also specifically counted the category of "artificial intelligence issues". The hot search terms were "What is ChatGPT?", "What is artificial intelligence?" "What can artificial intelligence do?" "How does artificial intelligence work?" "What is Midjourney?" Vietnam also separately listed hot search terms about artificial intelligence.
There are some Chinese or Chinese elements in the Malaysian list. Among the hot search terms for gadgets (Gadgets), mobile phone models such as Honor, Realme, and Redmi were selected. The Chinese TV series "Long Moon Ember" ranks at the top of the list of most searched TV series. Michelle Yeoh, the Oscar-winning actress this year, ranked third among the most popular searches for people, while singer Coco Lee ranked first among the most searched for deceased persons. Coco Lee is also the number one search term for deceased persons in Singapore.
In India, the country's "Chandrayaan-3" probe, which successfully landed on the moon this year, ranked first in the news. The Hangzhou Asian Games was also selected into the top five popular sports events.