Google yesterday announced Taiwan’s top searches for this year, with the term “earthquake” claiming top spot as the most searched for term.
The top 10 keywords reflect Taiwanese users’ most pressing concerns, from natural disasters to politics and sporting events, the company said.
“Earthquake” and “typhoon” ranked first and second this year, showing how large and frequent the former were, and the major impact the latter brought to people’s lives, Google said.
Photo: Bloomberg
This was also the year of presidential elections in Taiwan and the US, and political figures were prominent search terms, with “Ko Wen-je” (柯文哲), the Taiwan People’s Party chairman, and “US presidential election” both in the top five.
The TAIEX hit a record high this year, attracting attention and making the exchange-traded fund (ETF) keyword “00940” rise steeply in the search rankings.
The code is the Yuanta Taiwan Value High Dividend ETF.
Celebrity concerts by Jay Chou (周杰倫) and A-mei (張惠妹) at the Taipei Dome led to a wave of ticket purchases and caused a spike in searches for ticket-buying platform tixCraft.
Along with the most popular keyword searches, Google also published a list of Taiwan’s most popular athletes, baseball players, movies, dramas, concerts and overseas travel destinations.
The Taiwanese film The Pig, the Snake and the Pigeon (周處除三害) and keywords such as “Olympics,” “Lin Yu-ting” (林郁婷) and “WBSC Premier12” all showed how people took an interest in Taiwanese entertainment and sports, Google said.
The most popular athlete was Olympic boxing champion Lin, and the success of Team Taiwan at the Premier12 led to an increase in baseball’s popularity, it said.
People also use Google to learn the meaning of new words, leading to the keyword list also including the term “M3.”
“M3,” derived from the English term: “You know what I am saying,” became a popular meme.
Additional reporting by CNA
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