“FIFA” and “filing taxes” were the two most searched phrases on Google Inc’s most searched query list in Taiwan this year, according to Google’s Taiwan branch.
The “five special municipality elections,” which were held on Nov. 27, “typhoon” and “Flora Expo,” an ongoing event in Taipei, rounded out the top five.
The bottom five in the top 10 were transgender model Alicia Liu (劉薰愛), singing sensation Lin Yu-chun (林育群), Chinese beggar “Brother Sharp (犀利哥),” the Asian Games, and controversial English teacher Carrie Chen (陳子璇), Google Taiwan said in a statement on Friday.
Of the top 10, only “FIFA” was searched for in European letters.
Meanwhile, Google produced another list featuring only search queries from smartphone users in Taiwan for the first time.
The new list reflected the growing popularity of smartphones in the country. In contrast to the overall search, only two of the top 10 most popular search queries from smartphones were in Chinese.
“FIFA” placed second behind “HTC” and was followed by “CNN,” “MLB [Major League Baseball],” “Yahoo,” “Facebook” and “iPhone.”
The first Chinese-language query on the smartphone list — “desktop wallpaper” — ranked eighth, ahead of “NBA [National Basketball Association]” and the other Chinese-language entry, “Girls’ Generation,” a nine-member girl pop group from South Korea.
These results, Google Taiwan said, showed the effectiveness of online advertising and users’ interest in getting real-time scores from big sports events.
The top 10 brand search queries overall were “iPad,” “Google,” “iPhone,” “Facebook,” “Yahoo,” “MSN,” “HTC,” “YouTube,” “Tsann Kuen Enterprise Co” (a local electronics retailer) and “7-Eleven” (Taiwan’s largest convenience chain store).
All but Tsann Kuen were entered using the Western alphabet.
Google found that the smartphone search keywords better matched Taiwan’s top 10 movie list for the year than the general search queries did, as people often search for information about movies just before they go see them at a theater.
Only three movies in the general search list were among Taiwan’s top 10 box office successes, compared with eight movies on the smartphone search list, according to Google Taiwan.
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