By KIM KNIGHT - Sunday Star Times | Sunday, 28 December 2008
Aucklanders are looking for love.
Cantabrians are looking for The Flight of the Conchords.
And in Otago, they're looking for Jesus.
The top local (NZ) Google search terms of 2008 were released this month: games, Bebo, YouTube, TradeMe so far, so predictable. But when the Sunday Star-Times drilled deeper, the results painted a curious picture of our year on the internet.
Surfing for porn? You're more likely to live, in this order, in Taranaki, Auckland and Manawatu-Wanganui. Searches for Shortland Street were highest in Auckland and searches for Coronation Street were highest in Manawatu-Wanganui. Bill Hammond was our most searched artist (followed by Tim Wilson and John Reynolds), and when we went looking for recipes, it was in this order: cake, bread, pie, soup, chicken and muffin.
Many of the terms we wanted to check out had not been searched enough to produce a data report. Sorry, we can't tell you where people are looking for information on making pipe bombs or robbing banks. We can tell you, however, that Auckland was the only area where "genital warts" searches registered in any number (spikes were recorded in April and September).
In the nationwide battle for search supremacy, we discovered Ford beat Holden, Marmite beat Vegemite and romantic beat pragmatic. Hayley Westenra was more searched for than Kiri Te Kanawa, art topped sport and the National Party came out ahead of Labour.
We wondered where in the world people were looking for us. The top three country searches for the word "kiwi" came from New Zealand, Mongolia and Norway. Turns out the kiwi is both a flightless bird and the name of a very popular Mongolian girl band.
We regionalised our American search for Flight of the Conchords, and found our funny men were biggest in Utah.
New Zealanders were the fifth most likely nation to search for "Princess Diana", the first to look for "Lord of the Rings" and, less salubriously, the first to search the word methamphetamine (we beat the United States, Australia, Philippines and South Africa). Internationally, we came fourth in searches for "beer".
* Curious? Do your own research at: www.google.com/insights/search/
I was just on here looking for an art exhibit in Manly Beach on the Hibiscus Coast when I came across this article. Go figure.
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