Okay so yesterday I got this random itch to know what everyone was searching for last year. Kept seeing “Google trends” mentioned everywhere but like actual lists? Couldn’t find a quick breakdown. That’s when I stumbled across “Google Zeitgeist 2023”. Fancy name, right? Sounded complicated but the title promised “Popular Searches Fast”. Perfect.
First thing I did? Opened up my laptop, fired up the usual search engine – you know the one. Typed in “google zeitgeist 2023”. Hit enter. Bam! The main page popped up. Looked pretty clean, bunch of big pictures catching my eye. Felt like flipping through a magazine.
Didn’t know where to start, honestly. They split stuff into these chunks: Discoverers, Athletes, Movies, Songs, People. Made sense. Felt less overwhelming that way. Started clicking around.
Here’s kinda how I went through it:
- Clicked “Discoverers” first. Seemed like the biggest category. Saw lots of stuff about ChatGPT, obvs. But also some surprises, like this AI image thing everyone was using… forgot the name already, damn it. Oh right, Bard! That was big. Lots of techy “how to” searches too.
- Scrolled to “Athletes”. Football guys everywhere! Messi moving clubs, that was huge news searches apparently. Cricket players too, lots of names I didn’t recognize. Guess it depends where you live.
- Then “Movies” & “Songs”. Barbenheimer! Total takeover. Saw Barbie and Oppenheimer right up top. Music? Some artists mentioned like Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus… her “Flowers” thing was massive.
- Saved “People” for last. This was a real mix. Tragedies stuck out – searches for that submarine that went missing, the actress killed walking her dog. Also sports stars like Messi again, actors, singers. Mixed bag, really showed what grabbed people’s hearts and minds last year.
While clicking around, I noticed something cool: each section had these short blurbs. Like “Why was X trending?”. It didn’t just list stuff, it tried to explain the why. Like why “Barbieheimer” exploded or why everyone searched for that submarine. Helped make sense of the raw data, turned the lists into actual stories about the year.
Honestly? The whole thing took me maybe 20 minutes. It wasn’t super deep analysis, just a fast tour of what the world was asking about. Felt like scanning a highlight reel of 2023. Learned a few surprising things, confirmed other hunches (yeah, ChatGPT definitely ruled searches). Main takeaway? It’s just a big snapshot, showing what moments had us all hitting the search button, for good and bad reasons. Nothing super smart about it, just a neat, quick way to see what defined the year globally. That’s it really!
