Australians may not get a vote in the US presidential election but it topped the Google searches in the country in 2024, with Raygun, Julian Assange and the CrowdStrike outage being some of the key people and moments Australians wanted to know more about in the year.
The election that will return Donald Trump to the White House was the No 1 overall Google search by Australians in 2024, according to the annual search results list released by the tech giant on Tuesday. US election information also topped the questions asked of Google, with Australians wanting to know when the US election was held and who won.
The Olympics and the introduction to the world of the unique style of the breakdancer Raygun saw both keenly searched, with the Olympics taking five of the top 10 sport searches and the Paralympics taking two spots in the top 10.
The death of One Direction band member Liam Payne put his name in fourth place in overall searches, with Taylor Swift in the fifth spot , as well as being the most searched public figure in the world. Trump, who posted on Truth Social after Swift endorsed Kamala Harris that he hated the superstar, came in second. Harris came in fourth.
Related to the Swiftmania, Ticketek Marketplace – where people could buy second-hand tickets – was ninth place in overall searches.
Australians were following the news of the alleged murder of a Victorian woman, Samantha Murphy, which was in third place in news events. The Bondi Junction stabbing attack was also highly searched, and the advertising entrepreneur John Singleton was the most searched Australian figure in 2024, after his daughter was killed in the attack.
The WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, who in June returned to Australia after nearly 14 years in prison when he agreed to a plea deal with the United States, was the second-most searched Australian public figure in 2024.
The global outage of Windows computers in July led to the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike becoming a household name as it was found to be the cause (in fifth place in news events).
Australians were also being very mindful, with “demure” topping the list of word definition searches in response to a viral meme on TikTok by the creator Jools Lebron.
Aside from Payne, the deaths of Dame Maggie Smith, Jesse Baird, Shannen Doherty, Donald Sutherland and James Earl Jones were among the top searched.
Australians wanted to know how to watch sporting events more than anything else but were also interested in car repair, DIY Halloween costumes and “how to talk to women”. In the year when artificial intelligence seemed to become embedded in everything, how to switch off Meta’s AI was also on the list.
The New York Times’ Connections puzzle topped entertainment searches, with Saltburn, the Netflix series Baby Reindeer and the Australian favourite Boy Swallows Universe also on the list.
When it came to travel, Victorians seemed most keen to escape winter, with the top search for domestic travel being cheap flights from Melbourne to the Gold Coast, and two of the top 10 international travel searches being flights to Italy and Bangkok from Melbourne.
