Google’s Top Trending Terms of 2018: You Might Be Able to Guess the Top Pick

Search giant’s top results are filled with global sports events and recently-deceased celebrities

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Google’s released its top trending searches of 2018 on Wednesday — and you’ve probably already guessed where the world’s most viewed sporting event landed in the rankings.

That means, of course, the World Cup grabbed the number one spot. Searches for the ultimate soccer tournament peaked in the final week of June — about a week after it started and a few weeks before France beat Cinderella-story Croatia in the title match.

Several recently-deceased celebrities were heavily featured in the top trending searches of the year, with Swedish DJ Avicii coming in second behind the World Cup. Rapper Mac Miller, who died in September at the age of 26, and comic book legend Stan Lee landed directly behind Avicii.

Anthony Bourdain, Stephen Hawking, rapper XXXTentacion and designer Kate Spade were also featured in the top 10 trending searches.

A look at the top 10 trending searches for 2018 (via Google)

Box office sensation “Black Panther” was the only movie to make the list, coming in at number 5.

It’s worth pointing out here Google isn’t releasing it’s most searched keywords. Instead, it’s top trending keywords are calculated by the terms that received the biggest spike in searches from 2017 to 2018.

Google released several other top trending lists, including the top trending celebrities and news items of the year. The Royal Wedding edged out the U.S. midterm elections when it came to news searches, but still came in behind Hurricane Florence and the results for the Mega Millions lottery.

Meghan Markle, who married Prince Harry earlier in the year, was the top trending person of the year.

You can take a look at more of Google’s results here.

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