Google's Most Searched Subjects for 2014

If you’re not familiar with the following names, it probably means you didn’t research them enough. Meanwhile, other Australians Googled the heck out of them in 2014.

Todd Carney, Iggy Azalea, Margot Robbie, Torah Bright, Sia, and Alex McKinnon all made the top 10 of Aussie name-searches over the past 12 months.

Topping the list was one very familiar name – convicted drug smuggler Schapelle Corby. In the middle of the top 10 was another Aussie in strife – Rolf Harris. And a couple of key sporting icons who slipped into the high end of the list were tennis player Nick Kyrgios and ex-Olympic swimmer Ian Thorpe.

Now to that aforementioned names for those who’ve had their heads in the sand… Carney is the pro rugby league footballer who was sacked half-way through the 2014 season for off-field misbehaviour (read: caught pissing in his mouth); Iggy – as her name might suggest – is a bit of rock star – well, rappin’ starlet more like; Margot is the ex-Neighbours actress who recently made it big in Hollywood; Torah  is a professional Aussie snowboarder; Sia is a singer/songwriter from Adelaide recently nominated for a Golden Globe award; and McKinnon is yet another rugby player whose career was cut short this year, but tragically due to a spinal injury.

Continuing on a theme, sports and sad news received the most number of searches on Australian digital devices, the top five trending subjects being:

1. The World Cup
2. Malaysia Airlines (plane missing + plane gunned down)
3. Robin Williams (RIP)
4. Charlotte Dawson (RIP)
5. Phil Hughes (RIP)

Rounding out the Aussie search top 10 were Jennifer Lawrence (whose nudie pics were leaked online a few months back),

Schapelle Corby (you know the guff), myGov (because Medicare got lazy and wanted us to do all their soft-paperwork), Ebola (very sad, yes), and – god forbid – Flappy Bird.

For those unfamiliar with that last one, Flappy Bird is a mobile game, created by Vietnamese dude Nguyễn Hà Đông, in which the player controls a tragically-pixelated bird that attempts to fly between rows of pipes without coming into contact with them. Daft? Yes. Addictive? You betcha!

But for even more daftness, the list of ‘How to’ queries reads like a very sad ‘…for Dummies’ catalogue, topped by ‘How to draw’, followed by ‘…kiss’, ‘…crochet’, ‘…meditate’ and ‘…knit’ (what is it with all the kitsch crafts?). And, yes, in case you were wondering, ‘How to twerk’ did make it into the top 10, parking its big booty at number 8.  Antonino Tati