Why this year’s top Google searches have been kind of frigging scary

By creammagazine, December 4, 2025

In overall internet searches via Google this year, millions of Australians were looking up ‘Ed Gein’ – the serial killer who inspired Ryan Murphy’s recent season of ‘Monster’. Gein is number 6 in top searches, strangely sandwiched between online scam artist Belle Gibson and an odd need for peeps to keep looking up ‘St. Patrick’s Day’. Go figure.

Google Australia today released its annual Year in Search lists – a listicle look back at the events, people and trends that captured Australians’ curiosities in 2025.

Taking a look through the lists, it seems our appetite for discovery of information online has waned a little. Not that we’re not looking things up – we’re all certainly still doing a lot of that. It’s just that the subject matter that has piqued our interest over the past 365 days appears to be boring at best, infantile at worst.

News, as can be expected, has been our main go-to area but the topics most popularly searched weren’t anything earth-shattering, although ‘Cyclone Alfred’ made it in at number one (at least this shows a certain philanthropic concern on Aussies’ behalf).

Outspoken US politician ‘Charlie Kirk’ (may he rest in peace) is as far removed from Australian-related as can be, especially since we’ve all gotten a bad taste in our mouths after Donald Trump’s tarriff stuff-ups – but still, he made it into the Australian searches at number 2.

The Australian federal election came in third, ‘Iran’ fourth, and Belle Gibson in at number five. One of us even had to go and Google who that last one was.

‘Ed Gein’ sliced his way through and into the mix, sitting at number 6, namely thanks to Ryan Murphy’s masterful depiction of the dude in his Monster series. Ozzy Osbourne is in the top ten because he died. And the iPhone 17 is sitting at number 10 with those greedy sneaker-wearing suits in Silicon Valley probably in board meetings right now, cursing all of the above for beating their supposedly indispensable device (yeah, you say that until model 18 comes along).

In sports, ‘Women’s Cricket World Cup’ and ‘India vs England’ topped that section’s list and we’re still wondering what the big deal about cricket really is. In fact, we’re so clueless about cricket, we created a comedy sketch about it for you:

THE YEAR POP CULTURE WENT ARSE-UP

While everything appeared AI-made on the music front, and toys took a decidedly freakish turn, the bastions of popular culture were laughing all the way to the bank this year as the silliness of ‘Labubu’, the bias of Jimmy Kimmel (2 under Global Figures), and the Auto-Tuned redundancy of Kendrick Lamar (Global Figure #4) were all keyed in ardently (or with dulled enthusiasm… social media will do that to you). We suppose every generation has its Cabbage Patch Kid or fugly Furby, and that ill-informed late-night hosts like Kimmel are par for the course when America has certain military and economic agendas to push. Not that China is any better in its disregard for landfill or zeal for international conflict and we have them to thank for the ghastly Labubu craze.

On-screen entertainment fared somewhat better in the credibility stakes with ‘Apple Cider Vinegar’ and ‘Adolescence’ making their viral mark… Aha! So that’s who Belle Gibson is.

Food searches proved that all that MasterChef and baked TV series hype is just that. We don’t seem to be wanting to cook much fascinating fare when ‘hot cross buns recipe’ is the top food search. You can get those at the shops now, you know. Several no-hopers also thought they’d try their hand at making the Dubai chocolate recipe. Yeah, good luck with that one. There’s a reason it costs thirty dollars a bar at David Jones, twenty bucks at Spud Shed.

DIY enthusiasts were looking up ‘tuning a car’, general ‘home improvement’, oh, and the ever-so-important ‘how to make hair extensions’. Not sure how that last one got in there with all the wokeness about racism through cultural appropriation still running rampant.

‘How to make a lava lamp’ sits at number 7 in the DIY section which is a step further than even Frankie readers will take in keeping things down-home and retro-groovy.

‘Loss’ searches, or more so names we looked up when celebrities passed, included Gene Hackman, Diane Keaton, Pope Francis, Val Kilmer, and Australian actor Julian McMahon. And, sh!t, how did we miss that Hulk Hogan died?

All up, we didn’t find this year’s searches on Google that much to write home about. If anything, we found the general consensus a bit concerning. When queries like ‘How did Avicii die?’ (suicide seven years ago but still at number 10 in General Questions), ‘What is a fascist?’ (5 under Definitions), and – goodness gracious – ‘How to talk to women’ (number 5 under ‘How to…’) are among the things Aussie folk are looking up online, it kind of depicts an internet user who’s a bit backward, somewhat worrisome, perhaps even an all-out incel. And that’s not a good thing.

Suspiciously enough, there’s no mentions of ‘AI’ making it into any lists, except for one: ‘How to make an AI action figure’. Add that to what we just said in the paragraph above and your average Joe online might just be a bit of an Ed Gein himself…

Lisa Andrews & Antonino Tati

See the rest of this year’s top Google searches here.