New Zealand’s top Google searches
Posted 10 December 2008 // Basil Keane
Top 10 searches on google.co.nz in 2008
Google has announced its top searches for New Zealand in 2008.
1. games
2. bebo
3. youtube
4. Trade Me
5. lyrics
6. google
7. map
8. hotmail
9. tv
10. weather
Google, at number 6, is the strangest one. Why would you search in Google for Google? And how many people doing that, when they get their result, think, ‘I was just here’, and do the same search again?
We can comfort ourselves with the thought that it was also the Aussies’ sixth highest search term. It certainly disproves the urban legend that if you type Google into Google you can break the internet.
Google’s top 10 hit parade made me wonder what the top 10 keywords that took searchers to Te Ara were this year.
Top 10 Te Ara searches for 2008
1. Te Ara
2. Matariki
3. Hone Heke
4. Blobfish
5. Apirana Ngata
6. Pounamu (Greenstone 11th top search)
7. Koru
8. Kupe
9. Largest ocean
10. Cabbage tree
Blobfish, aka Mr Blobby
Matariki, the Māori New Year, moved from 3rd in 2007 to 2nd in 2008. That’s not bad considering that over 70% of that traffic came in May and June. The Blobfish, or Mr Blobby as he is affectionaly known in-house, was the big mover. He went from 10th in 2007 to 4th this year.
Hone Heke and Sir Apirana Ngata were the top historical individuals once again. Deep sea frill shark was number 2 in 2007, but disappeared completely in 2008.
And, of course, Te Ara is still number 1.
Top 10 keywords last month
Āraiteuru, a taniwha
Over the past month the top 10 keywords have been the usual suspects with the exception of Holmglen, Erebus crash, and taniwha.
The Holmglen was a ship wrecked off the coast of Timaru in November 1959. People were obviously trying to find out about the Holmglen after the tragic case of a diver who died in early November while diving to the wreck. The anniversary of another tragedy, the crash of an Air New Zealand DC10 on Mt Erebus, Antarctica, on 28 November 1979, saw an influx into the air crashes entry.
A large number of the taniwha searches are actually image searches, so a lot of you are wondering just what a taniwha looks like.
I bit dats nut ahl dah terms dut Google guht neh boi? Jest duh uns dhuts phit-ta-prunt
It’s interesting that 7 of the top 10 keywords that took people to Te Ara were maori.
Google’s top 10 does not exactly fill me with pride for NZ’s collective cultural intellect….
It would be useful to know what informs Te Ara’s top 10 list aside from current events. Any ideas Basil? I image the school curriculum is pretty influential.
Thanks for your comment Coln. Always enlightening.
Good observtion re: the Te Ara keywords, Ngā tokorima. In a sense, the Te Ara keywords reflect the ranking of particular entries on Google. Because a lot of our Māori themed entries are highly ranked by Google, with a number having the number one ranking, people searching for those words are more likely to click through to Te Ara. Every click through is then counted, hence the high rankings.
Thanks for the comment Kerryn.
To be fair, the Google top 10 search reflects people getting on with everyday life. It could be worse, the eighth highest search term for the Aussies was ‘My’.
Re: Te Ara’s top 10 list. Google ranking and current events are important. School projects generating keywords probably play a part, but are harder to track.
Following on from the Aussies eighth highest search term being ‘My’ if you google it Myspace is the first website to come up. This isn’t too bad seeing about 80% of internet users are between 18 and 30 years of age which is the main demographic for social networking sites.
Good point Richard! The Aussies also have MySpace and Facebook at fourth and fifth respectively. We bebo, while they myspace and facebook.
I have my fingers crossed for Mr Blobfish for no.1 next year, maybe we should start a campaign?
Well Whiti, what’s not to love with the Blobfish? It’s been number two keyword over the past month. Social-networking, or t-shirts might push it over the edge, but it’s got a way to go.