Every year, Google releases a list of its Year in Search, revealing the most frequently searched terms across the world.
As is to be expected, the COVID-19 pandemic has dominated discourse in 2020, with the majority of the top searched terms being related to the pandemic and local regulations.
According to South Africa’s Year in Search, it seems the most important things to South Africans in 2020 included the COVID-10 pandemic, the US elections, load shedding and, unsurprisingly, cigarettes.
Here are the top trending searches for South Africa in 2020:
Remember the early stages of lockdown when everyone and their grandmother turned into a baker? It appears locals were loving the kitchen this year, and expanded their culinary prowess. Many searched for recipes to make homemade pizza, doughnuts, pineapple beer, banana loaf, and naan bread.
The Karabo Maboe cheating scandal dominated headlines this year, with the former Expresso presenter, the woman he allegedly had an affair with, Nikita Murray, and his wife Monique Muller ranking as the first, second and tenth top trending South African personalities for 2020 respectively.
The list goes: