Google is all things search and so when it tell us something is popular, we can be reasonable sure that things are so—even if it’s something surrounding one of its own products.
According to Google’s annual list of fastest growing search terms, ‘Google+’ is second only to ‘Rebecca Black’ on its list of Zeitgeist most popular terms. This placement on the list, whilst somewhat dubious (for obvious reasons), might just be true. After all, the launch of Google+ as a social network was perhaps the biggest tech story for all of 2011. Initially the platform was ‘invite-only’ and this helped to push curiosity through the roof. There was a reported 10,000% increase in searches for the term shortly after it came into public consciousness.The rest of the Zeitgeist list is dominated by ‘Apple-related’ searches. Apple dominated the number 6 slot with “iPhone 5″; it also dominated the number 9 slot with “Steve Jobs” and the number 10 slot with “iPad2″.
If the presence of Google+ on the annual list of fastest growing search terms is anything to go by, then the social network itself should expect strong growth in the upcoming year. That’s assuming of course that the millions of people who searched for Google+, like what they found.
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