These are Singapore’s most popular Google searches of 2018

Photo: Charles Deluvio via Unsplash
Photo: Charles Deluvio via Unsplash

Politics, sports, and superheroes (the Marvel ones, obviously) dominated the search bars in Singapore this year, according to Google. Today, the search engine giant carried out its annual tradition of releasing the top trending searches for the year.

While the world had been fixated by tragic celebrity deaths (RIP Mac Miller, Stan Lee and Anthony Bourdain), the Little Red Dot had regional politics in focus. We don’t even need to remind you that the historic Trump-Kim summit came up top, landing in the number one spot in trending Singapore news, and number eight in overall trending searches. The ASEAN Summit here that saw Russian president Vladimir Putin dropping by, Canada’s Justin Trudeau being charming as heck, as well as Indonesian leader Jokowi eating at Lucky Plaza was ninth in trending Singapore news.

What had Singaporeans even more curious was the Malaysian election (#2 in trending searches; #2 in trending international news) that saw former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad sweeping back into power. Disgraced leader Najib Razak was the fourth-most searched term this year — unsurprising considering all the troubles he’s facing right now over alleged corruption.

Because we’re a country of geeks, comic book movies are top trending searches too. The late great Stan Lee was the fifth-most searched term for the year, while the movies he helped spawn such as Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War came in seventh and 10th respectively in top trending searches. Despite Crazy Rich Asians being actually set in Singapore, it wasn’t as impressionable as Black Panther, Infinity War and Deadpool 2 — the all-Asian Hollywood vehicle is only the fourth-trending flick this year. In terms of trending TV shows, some obscure Chinese drama called Story of Yanxi Palace reigned at the top.

But the event that took the top spot on the trending search list in Singapore is none other than the FIFA World Cup 2018. Google had even created a special search engine feature for the occasion which allowed football fans and pundits to stay updated on the latest scores and match replays.

“With one of the most engaged mobile users in the world, and the region’s internet economy set on growing bigger, (the Google search engine) continues to play a big part in the lives of Singaporeans, providing them with the latest news, entertainment and deals online,” enthused Angeline Leow, Head of Communications for Google Singapore.

Google’s Year in Search Singapore can be viewed here.



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