What are Canada's top Google searches for 2012? Justin Bieber, Stephen Harper and bacon, for starters.
Google's annual Zeitgeist revealed 2012's most popular search terms and trends in different categories, from celebrities to sports teams to destinations. It listed the top 10 entries in every field, providing an interesting glimpse into the year's biggest moments.
Whitney Houston topped this year's 'trending' searches for celebrities after her tragic death in February. Boy band One Direction were the most searched musicians over Justin Bieber, although the Biebs did finish first in the list for most searched Canadian musicians. Prime Minister Stephen Harper earned the top spot on the most searched Canadian politicians list, edging out Liberal leadership candidate Justin Trudeau.
The company compiled the lists by examining over one trillion Google searches made in 2012, exempting repeated searches and spam, and including information from different sources such as Google Trends and internal data tools, it said. Google defined 'trending searches' as "search queries with the highest amount of traffic over a sustained period in 2012 as compared to 2011." The 'most searched' terms were those with the largest volume of searches.
To see more of Canada's top Google searches in more categories like Canadian food, retailers and cities in Google Maps, flip through the gallery.