Sport and music dominate, but some found it all too taxing

Posted by Diana Starmer, Account Associate

Ed: We thought the blog was a great place to start announcing the monthly "top gaining searches" on Google Australia

Last month saw a curious mix of search terms gaining ground on the Google Australia Zeitgeist.

Hype began to build around the Socceroos playing in the upcoming Asian cup behind star defender Lucas Neill. We also had NFL fever and Kevin Sheedy’s troubles at essendon football club featured in the headlines.

Popstar Pink hit our shores for her huge national tour and all across Australia, fans went online in search of pink concert dates and ticket information. Tickets for xavier rudd also went on sale in May ahead of the release of his new album White Moth.

But it wasn’t all sport and music, Australians began to feel the end of the financial year approaching, turning their thoughts to their tax file number and interest rates at the RBA (Reserve Bank of Australia).

On the celebrity front, Home and Away starlet indiana evans along with American actress and wrestler stacy keibler occupied our hearts and minds. Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton’s visit to Sydney had us searching for our Hollywood gossip, but there was a nod to higher culture when an Andy Warhol painting broke new records at auction.

And finally… for the school holidays is everyone planning to go to seaworld? Maybe we’ve put two and two together to make five but these two were certainly popular search terms.

For breaking news and obscure information alike, Australians are searching on Google! What follows is a summary of Google Australia Zeitgeist results for the top gainers on Google.com.au in the month of May.

For more information, visit the Google Zeitgeist and Google Trends.

Top Google.com.au Gainers for May:

1. lucas neill
2. pink concert
3. rba
4. nfl
5. wireless broadband
6. indiana evans
7. tax file number
8. perez
9. concept cars
10. Mars
11. wheat
12. xavier rudd
13. childhood obesity
14. street fighter
15. stacy keibler
16. burberry
17. Andy Warhol
18. essendon football club
19. seaworld
20. school holidays

Aussies do "good" searches

Posted by Kate Conroy, AdWords Coordinator

One of the cool things about search engines is that they seem to mirror the collective psyche of all the people who search on them. Australians are no different, and we've noticed that we Aussies have our own special profile when it comes to searching Google.

If you take a look at Google Trends we like to search for 'good' more often than people in any other country. This makes us seem like an up-beat and happy crowd, but we also do the most searches for 'loser' and 'idiot' which seem to indicate the opposite. The Kiwis, on the other hand do the most searches for 'winner' and 'thinking'. But they also do the most searches for 'sheep', so we can keep making sheep jokes for a while longer.

The way we search is in some ways not surprising. Proportionally, Australians do the most searches for meat pies, Aussie Rules, sunshine, sunburn, sea change, air conditioning, beer, Torana, snake, water restrictions, roast lamb, quit smoking, backyard, child care, kids and almost all of the searches for cubby house. Melbournians search for spring carnival, Sydney-siders search for harbour and red wine, and the good folk of Brisbane search for lifesavers and cattle dog. In Canberra they want a home loan and in Perth they’re all looking for mine jobs.

But it’s the non-stereotypical searches that have us scratching our heads, and so now’s your chance to enlighten us on some of your oddball search behaviour.

Why does Sydney, city of sin and parties, do the most searches for Easter and bored? How come everyone in Perth wants a trip to the chocolate factory?

Why do we only come second to the Brits on searching for help? What does it say about our appreciation of our native fauna that we do fewer searches for Koala than Slovakia and Spain? Does it mean something that we do the most searches for hate while at the same time we’re all searching for happiness?

Why on earth in this hot, dry country do we do the most searches for ski hire? Are we all so tired that all we want to search for is sleeping in? Does Australia have more lost dogs than any other country? Perhaps it’s about time we added a ‘Pet’ tab to Google search for Australia!

If you can offer any illuminating insights into the search behaviour of Australians we’d love to hear your feedback.