The Presidential election — important. The iPhone 5 — really important.
Those were some of the results in a report on top terms of 2012 for search engine Bing released today (Nov. 26).
Pop culture, rather than highbrow ideas, dominated most of the 26 search categories Bing reported. So for major news events, "iPhone 5" — a small upgrade to the popular smartphone — edged out " 2012 Elections" — which will affect the fate of social, economic, tax and military policy for at least the next four years. (Most categories were pop culture related, however.)
Not surprisingly, "iPhone 5" topped consumer tech searches, along with "iPad" and "iPad 3" in the top 5. They shared that list with competitors "Samsung Galaxy S III" (or "Samsung Galaxy S3") and Kindle. [See also: The iPhone 5 — How Did We Get Here? ]
Kim Kardashian was the star to watch. She was the most-searched person and most-searched reality TV star (followed by sisters Khloe and Kourtney). Meanwhile, "Kim Kardashian & Kanye West" was the fourth most-searched celebrity couple.
In social media, it was probably no surprise that Facebook and Twitter were numbers one and two. But at number 5 came social blogging network Tumblr — a relatively new site that just yesterday announced it has ranked as the tenth most-popular site in the U.S.
Bing has published the full results on its search blog.
Google has not announced a similar list, but it shows top terms at any moment on its Google Trends page. It also has a search function to see how popular a term has been over the year. November has been Ms. Kardashian's top month. She is especially popular in the U.S. and Botswana, where she went to tour a DeBeers diamond mine to ease her concerns about "blood diamonds."