Key points:
- Searches for 'Betty White' on Google shot up in 2022.
- White died on 31 December 2021.
- Sports, the war in Ukraine and Wordle also made Google's top 10 trending list.
The Google search history of Australians over the past year has shown a keen interest in not only sports and sports players, but in global events, playing word games on our phones and also the late American actress and comedian, Betty White.
White's name came was the search engine's 10th most trending search term in Australia in 2022 so far. Google had released a list that showed which terms had the highest spike in traffic over a sustained period in 2022 compared to 2021.
White died on 31 December 2021 and the outpouring of adoration for the 99-year-old actress flowed into the new year.
She was best known for playing Rose in The Golden Girls, a sitcom that aired between 1985 and 1992 and won new fans when picked up in recent years by streaming networks.
The high number of searches for "Betty White" likely comes down to a couple of factors. On 17 January, what would have been White’s 100th birthday, Google created a tribute to her on its search engine which showed petals fluttering down from the logo with a message from the Golden Girls theme song "Thank you for being a friend" when anyone searched her name.
Searches would have spiked when Australians woke up on New Year's Day to verify news of White's death.
Erroneous rumours that the award-winning actress had died had spread far in previous years. In 2014 many assumed she was dead after misreading the satirical headline "Actress Betty White, 99, Dyes Peacefully In Her Los Angeles Home".
The headline resurfaced a number of times, fooling those who didn’t bother to read the rest of the article for years afterwards, and others mistook "Betty White" trending on Twitter (when it was her birthday) as a premature sign that she had died.
Wordle tops most searched list
"Wordle" was the number one search term on Google's trending search list.
The popularity of the word game took off in Australia at the beginning of 2022, when people began posting different combinations of green and yellow squares to their social media profiles to share how they’d fared with guessing the five-letter word of the day.
The original Wordle game could only be played via a website, which explains why so many people searched it.
The ongoing situation in Ukraine, sparked by Russia’s invasion of the country saw ‘Ukraine’ become a common search term this year.
Australians seeking information on what is happening there, why it is happening and how they can help likely made up many of those searches.
Australians love sport
The deaths of Australian icons - cricketer Shane Warne and singer/actress Olivia Newton-John - saw searches of their names increase dramatically in 2022.
Six of the other searches in the top 10 were also related to sport. The Australian Open and Novak Djokovic ranked 2nd and 6th, with the latter’s deportation in the wake of a saga surrounding the tennis player’s visa and vaccination status, meaning he was unable to compete in the event.
The surprise retirement of world number one tennis player Ash Barty also led to people searching her name in 2022, as well as the Word Cup, which came in 3rd of all searches on Google in Australia.
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