Google shared one of the most interesting end-of-year wrap-ups you’ll read, revealing the searches that you, and everyone else in the U.S., found most fascinating in 2022.
Topping the list, the simple yet challenging five-letter, word-guessing game Wordle is the most searched-for term of the year. If you want to know more about how to play Wordle, check out our guide to satisfy all of those questions.
Being an election year, that was the most requested news and second most popular search overall. The passing of the U.K.’s Queen Elizabeth and actress Betty White saddened us in 2022, leading to the second-greatest number of news searches and third most searched, respectively. We have a list of the best movies and TV shows about the Queen if you want to learn more about this iconic leader.
We can’t get enough Encanto and we all wanted to know more about this beloved Disney movie, taking first place over Marvel’s playful superhero adventure Thor: Love and Thunder. Encanto also featured the most searched-for song, We Don’t Talk About Bruno.
Google included searches for cultural landmarks on Google Maps also and the eerily-named Skinwalker Ranch in Utah was most intriguing. This is the site of supposed UFO encounters and we all love a spooky mystery, as long as it isn’t nearby.
Google has a feature that allows you to hum a song to start a search and the Backstreets Boys’ Everybody proved to be the most hummed song of the year. In what seems like a joke, Google rick-rolled us with the second most popular hum, Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley.
There are plenty of end-of-year summaries available but Google definitely has the pulse of the nation. You can see the full list of top Google searches for 2022 on Google Trends.