Featured in Ireland’s top 2022 Google trends – with people looking for successful internet games more than war on Ukraine

MORE people were interested in Wordle than the war in Ukraine, Google Trends has shown.

Every year we turn to Google to find the answers to our questions – from cooking to Corrie.

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Whenever we don’t know information about something, we head straight to the search engine to find out in seconds.

And now they’ve rounded up the most popular things Irish people wanted to know in 2022.

It seems that games have been a top trend, from brain teasers like Wordle to sports competitions.

And the Google Year in Search also showed that we were mad to go back to the cinema after the pandemic restrictions ended.

In terms of people, searches for Johnny Depp were more popular than Putin, while the deaths of some of our favorite stars topped our browsing history.

Not just what, but it revealed the top “what is” and “how” questions we’ve set out to find out over the past 12 months.

Here, Nicola Bardon looks at the most searched areas on Irish Google this year.

TOP OVERALL SEARCHES

The hit game Wordle took the world by storm as people tried to guess a five-letter word in just six tries. And it had Ireland in its grip as the most Googled thing of the last year.

Immediately after that came Ukraine, as started by the Russians in February of this year.

The deaths of Queen Elizabeth in September in the UK and 23-year-old teacher Aisling Murphy in Tullamore earlier in the year were also among the top 10 searches of the year.

Others were the World Cup, the game of Heardle, and the TV show, the Jeffrey Dahmer Story.

PERSONS:

Perhaps not surprisingly, Johnny Depp and Amber Heard were the most Googled in Ireland this year, as their court case was streamed across news channels and social media before Depp won the case.

Will Smith ranked third on most Google folks after his infamous slap to Chris Rock at the Oscars in February. Vladimir Putin and Liz Truss took fourth and fifth place.

LOSSES:

Every year we tragically lose some of our favorite stars or we mourn the tragic death of one of our own.

The Queen’s death was the most Googled in Ireland, followed by the tragic death of Aisling Murphy.

The accidental death of Anne Heche following her car crash in August also got people googling, while the deaths of Olivia Newton-John, Betty White and Taylor Hawkins also prompted a spike in searches.

SPORTS:

As the World Cup in Qatar continues, it remains at the top of sports searches.

The Australian Open in January finished second, largely for making headlines when defending champion Novak Djokovic was originally told he could play on a medical exemption from the Covid-19 vaccine, but when he arrived in Australia he was arrested and turned away because he didn’t have one.

Ireland, who defeated the All Blacks 2–1 in their tour of New Zealand, finished third.

MOVIES:

Robert Pattinson’s role as The Batman for the first time was the most Googled film of the year.

It also starred Colin Farrell as the unrecognizable penguin. Tom Holland’s Uncharted took second place, while Thor Love & Thunder took third place.

The new Top Gun was the fourth most googled film in Ireland, while one of our films was number five – Banshees of Inisherin, Colin Farrell’s second top five finish.

HOW ONE:

Many of us turn to Google when we need to know how to get something done quickly.

This year the question we needed to answer the most was how to get a Covid certificate followed by booking a PCR.

Wordle came back into play as people searched how to play it, but Covid was back in fourth as people wondered how to do an antigen test. And out of the blue in fifth place was how to solve a Rubik’s Cube.

WHAT IS:

Google also lets us know about things we can’t figure out that might be too embarrassing to ask.

First of all, with all the talk about the war against Ukraine, people wanted to know what is NATO?

This was followed by a health question – what is monkeypox? In third place it was again the game What is Wordle, while Russia with What is an Oligarch?

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