San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Taylor Swift left off Google’s list of most-searched terms
Despite dominating 2023 with her record-breaking “Eras Tour” and album rereleases, Taylor Swift did not make Google’s annual list of the year’s most popular search terms, which typically features major news events, cinematic blockbusters and prominent celebrities.
Swift’s boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce, however, earned a place in the top five most searched athletes and the most searched people, while Colombian singer Shakira took the lead as the most popular global musician. The latter is likely attributed to Shakira’s involvement in a $15 million tax fraud trial in Spain and the attention she garnered through a viral song blasting soccer player Gerard Piqué after their separation.
Following closely were country singer Jason Aldean, who faced controversy over his song and video, “Try That in a Small Town,” and Joe Jonas, one of Swift’s ex-lovers, who made headlines due to his divorce from “Game of Thrones” star Sophie Turner.
Even though Swift was recently named Time magazine’s Person of the Year, received credit for stimulating the global economy, and caused a literal earthquake in Seattle, the pop singer is conspicuously absent from all categories.
But it turns out that Google, the Mountain View-based search engine company, has a solid excuse for omitting her from the lists: Swift’s name is so popular that it is on par with common search phrases like “traffic” and “weather.”
“Top trending lists make for more colorful and interesting data pulls and are generally better at identifying what people were curious about in 2023 relative to 2022,” Google
spokesperson Colette Garcia explained to Gizmodo, the science and technology website. “The ‘trending’ queries are the searches that had a high spike in traffic over a sustained period in 2023 as compared to 2022. Taylor Swift is someone who consistently has a high amount of search interest, not someone who had a big spike in 2023 as compared to 2022.”
That means Swift’s enduring popularity ensured she didn’t register as a notable trend this year, unlike the “Barbie” or “Oppenheimer” movies or the recipe for bibimbap.
Meanwhile, the ongoing Israel-Hamas war dominated the news, and Matthew Perry, Tina Turner and Sinead O’Connor were the most searched celebrity deaths. Modesto native Jeremy Renner topped the list for most searched actor — and claimed the No. 2 spot for most searched person after Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin, who collapsed during a January NFL game — due to a New Year’s Day snowplow accident in Lake Tahoe.
“Shirt” also claimed the top spot as the most searched apparel item — likely because Swifties bought so many during her tour.