Google just revealed what you found most fascinating in 2022

By Alan Truly Published December 7, 2022

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.

A Google search page for most popular movie of 2022 is shown falling into a vortex. — Google

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.

Recommended Videos

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.

Topics

Tech News

Computing Writer

Alan Truly is a Writer at Digital Trends, covering computers, laptops, hardware, software, and accessories that stand out as…

Computing

Google’s new privacy tool lets you know if your personal info was leaked

A Google presenter announcing alerts for personal info.

Google has just announced the expansion of its upcoming privacy tool. Made to protect your personally identifiable information (PII) from being too easy to find, the "Results About You" tool was first announced in May 2022. It will soon begin rolling out to a wider audience, and once it's out, you'll be able to easily request the removal of your personal data.

Now, at Search On 22, Google shared that it will be expanding this tool with an additional useful feature -- the ability to set up alerts if, and when, your PII appears on the web.

Mobile

You can now augment Google Lens photo searches with text

Google Lens brings visual searches to the phone.

Google is looking to improve its search results by leveraging both the power of photos, along with additional text for context. The new experience is called multisearch, which will be available on phones and tablets as part of Google Lens inside the Google app.

Google says the feature combines visual and word searches together to deliver the best results possible, even when you can't describe exactly what it is that you're trying to search for.

Computing

AI could soon have a mind of its own. I spoke to experts to learn more about AGI

Clear Mannequin on Dark Blue Background.

Artificial intelligence (AI) may soon have a mind of its own, and many companies want to make that happen as soon as possible. Whether this is plausible remains to be seen; however, if achieved, we could move from the AI age to the AGI age in record time.

The AI explosion of recent years may seem sudden to many, but the industry has been in constant development for several decades. As technology goes on, the evolution of AI has been rapid, and many in the industry are already looking toward the next big thing. That thing is Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which currently remains a theoretical concept, but many believe will be the next wave in training AI to be autonomously intelligent.

nproxy.org