Taylor Hawkins, Israel Adesanya, and Top Gun are all featured on Google’s ‘Year in Search’ - a big ol’ round-up of what everyone in New Zealand was searching for in 2022. Everything from sports, iconic names we lost, movies, recipes, classes and more are covered in the list.
Don't worry mate, Google didn't dig too deep into your search history, but Pornhub did earlier this year.
The #1 top trending search for 2022 from Kiwis was ‘Wordle’ - the simple game where you’ve got six attempts to guess a five-letter word.
Reminders of Covid came in at #2 and #4 with ‘Locations of Interest’ and ‘Covid Cases Today’ taking out those spots respectively. A couple of big sporting moments rounded out the top 5, with ‘Australian Open’ being #3 and ‘All Blacks vs Ireland’ coming in at #5 (let’s not talk about that one).
When it comes to the legends we lost this year, there were sadly a few big names. Unsurprisingly, Queen Elizabeth was the most searched-for loss in 2022 (#10 overall). Legendary Australian spin bowler Shane Warne was second with Betty White being third.
The supremely talented and deeply missed Taylor Hawkins was the sixth most searched for in that category, while ‘Goodfellas’ actor Ray Liotta was tenth.
Google also listed the most popular fellow Kiwis we all searched for this year. The PM’s fiance Clarke Gayford, pro golfer Ryan Fox, and gold medal-winning snowboarder Zoe Sadowski-Synott came in at #1, #2, and #3 respectively.
Our (sadly former) UFC champion Israel Adesanya was fifth, just behind Lydia Ko at #4. Fellow sportspeople Joseph Parker and Ruby Tui were #9 and #10 respectively.
Taika Waititi’s ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ was the film Kiwis searched for the most this year, with ‘Top Gun’ coming in at #2. ‘The Batman’, ‘Encanta’, and ‘Black Adam’ round out the top 5.
When it comes to the top 5 TV shows Kiwis were searching for HBO and Netflix dominated the top 5. The former’s ‘Euphoria’ and ‘House of Dragons’ were #1 and #5 respectively, while the latter had the second, third, and fourth spots with ‘Stranger Things’, ‘The Watcher’, and ‘Manifest’.
