Google Releases Top Searched Terms of 2008 In UAE & 36 Other Countries

Yesterday, Google announced its annual Zeitgeist, a look at 2008 through the collective eyes of the world on the web. The 2008 Year-End Zeitgeist offers a unique perspective on the year's major events and hottest trends based on global searches, as well as searches conducted in UAE and 35 additional countries.

In the UAE the fastest rising lists of 2008 proved to be quite interesting with the Beijing Olympics, Sheikh Nasser Bin Zayed and the Atlantis Hotel rising to the top ten searches for this year. We also looked at what the top 10 most popular search terms related to the economy and the fastest rising lists of vacations, famous people and restaurants residents of the UAE are searching for.

In addition to telling us what people are curious about in the UAE, Google Zeitgeist tools also offer insight into which topics were of interest across the globe. This year, for the first time since its inception in 2001, we have taken a deep dive into global search information across more than 30 countries and published our findings all in one place: the Google Zeitgeist 2008 website. This year's global fastest rising searches show interest in global events such as the Beijing Olympics and Euro 2008, with a number of American politicians and international social networking sites showing up as well:

Google reveals the internet "Zeitgeist" (German for "the spirit of the times") through an exploration of the millions of search queries we receive every day. In addition to the Year-end Zeitgeist, which highlights the top trends of 2008, we also have several tools that give insight into global, regional, past and present search trends. Google Zeitgeist tools can never be used to identify individual users because we rely on anonymized, aggregated counts of how often certain search queries occur over time. These tools are available year-round for you to play with, explore, and learn from: www.google.com/zeitgeist