Father’s Day a hit with South Africans

Despite the major news stories that happened in June, according to data from Google Trends South Africans were most interested in Caitlyn Jenner. Also tops was Father’s Day.

The information was collated from what South Africans searched on Google during the month, grouping search terms on a common theme into trend clusters.

Of the 96 search clusters, 17 related to Father’s Day. Some of the Father’s Day-related terms were “father’s day wishes”, “father’s day quotes”, “happy father’s day pictures” and “when is father’s day?”

Also of major interest to South Africans was news of Jenner’s transition to a transgender woman. In fact, according to Google data, South Africa has consistently been in the top five countries searching for news about Jenner.

Some of Jenner’s related terms heavily searched were “call me caitlyn” and others refered to her former name: “bruce jenner vanity fair” and “bruce jenner woman”.

The other big news relating to celebrity couple Kanye West and Kim Kardashian’s second pregnancy barely featured with only one search cluster.

Less surprising, though, trend clusters relating to sports were also a major theme this month.

In terms of sports, what interested South Africans most were the Uefa Champions League final – Barcelona vs Juventus; Kaizer Chiefs losing some of its star players; the French Open; golf’s US Open; and the new Springbok jersey.

There was, however, a shock in terms of the sports news South Africans were not searching for. With only one search cluster, the ongoing Fifa scandal was of less interest.

Hard news stories most searched last month were the Charleston shooting; the death of an American tourist who was mauled by a lioness at The Lion Park in Johannesburg; and the announcement of a possible parole for Paralympian Oscar Pistorius.

Google processes more than 40 000 searches every second worldwide. This translates to more than 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year.