Trying to understand how society thinks and what it cares the most about during a certain time period says a lot about a country. Egypt is a society divided on many levels and interests that meet each event with several reactions and point of views.
But getting to know online trends in the country can be found simply through the most popular searches on Google.
Google announced Tuesday its 14th “Annual Year in Search”, spotting the year’s major events, TV shows and public figures.
In 2014, Egyptians highlighted a dominating interest in annual events and people. The famous belly dancer Safinaz took the number one spot in the most searchable people over the year, beating actor Khaled Saleh, whose death left people in shock, into second place. President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi took third place, despite the huge popularity which saw him roll into the presidency.
The presidential election was the most popularly searched event of 2014, with Emirati singer Hussein Al-Jasmi’s patriotic song, “Boushret Kheir”, released during the elections encouraging people to vote, also popular.
“Halawet Rouh”, pop star Haifa Wehby’s film which faced a lot of negative reactions leading to it being censored, was the film Egyptians searched Google for the most during the year.
Much of the data was informed by Google Trends, a publicly available tool that displays relative search volume globally, time periods and queries, according to Google.
