Football, reality TV and the death of celebrities were the most popular topics Portuguese people searched for using Google in 2014. How to make “easy money” and details of next-gen cell phones also rank high on the list.
As Lusa news agency points out, if one were to describe the average Portuguese citizen according to their Google searches, we would have a population that generally “likes football and Casa dos Segredos (reality TV show), cares about the life and death of celebrities, wants to become rich without working, cares about economic and health issues and closely follows the developments in the cell-phone world”.
Every year, the Internet search engine reveals a global and nation-by-nation list with the things people use Google to find out.
In Portugal, this summer’s World Cup in Brazil was the most searched topic, followed by TVI’s reality show ‘Secret Story’ (Casa dos Segredos) and the death of Portuguese actor Rodrigo Menezes, who was found collapsed in his home in October.
The popularity of reality TV shows is even more apparent as ‘Blog Azul’, a webpage about ‘Secret Story’, is fourth on the list, followed by NOS, the recently-created communications company that combined Zon and Optimus, and Novo Banco, the bank reborn from the ashes of Banco Espírito Santo (BES). Another commonly-searched topic was November’s Legionella outbreak in Vila Franca de Xira, which killed 12 people and infected 375.
Google also ranked beginning with ‘how to’.
The craze that had children and parents all making their own plastic bracelets earlier this year was no.1, with many seeking instructions on how to put them together. Next up were questions about easy money-making schemes such as “Telexfree and Wenyard”.
Other popular searches include info on the latest smartphones such as the iPhone6 and the Galaxy S5, how to make chocolate cake and how the Dukan Diet – a protein-based diet originated in France – works.
Indeed, the global searches were not all that different.
Robin Williams, the hugely-popular American actor who committed suicide in August, was at the top of the list for global trending searches in 2014, followed by the 2014 World Cup and the Ebola virus crisis in Africa.
Further statistics show the world is still trying to figure out what happened to Malaysia Airlines’ MH370 plane, which vanished in March with over 230 people onboard while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Many searches were also registered for the same airline’s MH17 flight which was blown out of the sky over the Ukraine in July, killing 283 people.
Football, reality TV and celebrities among most popular Google searches
