I think we can all agree that it has been a long, hard, emotionally scarring year — definitely one for the history books. At times, it has felt never-ending. But December is here, and that means we've finally reached the end of this nightmare. Barring 2021 doesn't turn out to be even more catastrophic than 2020 (knock on wood), many of us are breathing a sigh of relief. Looking back, there is hardly a way to summarize this dumpster fire of a year — way too much went down. But Google has rounded up the top searches made over the last 365 days, and it just about does the trick.
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As you can probably imagine, "coronavirus," was the top searched word of the year. That one seems obvious. "Election results," and "zoom" also paved the way in "searches that had a high spike in traffic over a sustained period," according to Google. Next in line, we had notable deaths, including "Kobe Bryant," "Naya Rivera," "Chadwick Boseman," and "George Floyd," all of whom passed away tragically in 2020.
So far, as I'm sure you can tell, all of the top searches have been rather depressing. But wait, it gets worse. The top searches in news goes to "stimulus checks," "unemployment," "Australia fires," "hurricane Laura," and "murder hornets." On the political side of things, Google marked "Kanye West," "Kim Jong Un," "Joe Biden," and "Kamala Harris" as the top searches.
The most popular searches in entertainment were the most lighthearted of the year. Celebrities like, Joaquin Phoenix, Jada Pinkett Smith, Travis Scott, and Tom Hanks all made the top of the list, with Cardi B, and Megan Thee Stallion's "WAP" trailing not far behind. "Tiger King" was one of the most-searched TV shows — no surprise there.
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Last but certainly not least, "how to cut men's hair at home" was one of the top searched how-tos of the year, reminding us that at the height of this pandemic, we were all cutting out own hair from home. Those were dark times.
