2019 has been an eventful year. From groundbreaking technology developments to political blunders and natural disasters. Google’s 2019 Year in Search aggregates Google searches from all over the world for the past year. Synthesio has taken the top 5 searches and applied the power of social intelligence analysis to see what surfaces.

Top 5 searched topics in the United States for 2019 are as follows:

  • Disney+
  • Antonio Brown
  • Nipsey Hussle
  • Hurricane Dorian
  • Cameron Boyce

Let’s crunch some data:

Using artificial intelligence and social listening, we dug up some intriguing new information about the year’s top searches.

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Our trends landscape detected that the highest number of mentions were about Disney Plus, the new streaming powerhouse including content from Disney, Pixar, and Marvel. Along with huge pushes from advertising, discussions online has surrounded whether or not we need another streaming platform. On the other hand, Hurricane Dorian, the Category 5 hurricane that rocked the Bahamas and the Carribean in August 2019 had the fastest velocity of our topics. This means that once people started to talk about the hurricane, it went viral quickly.

This kind of social intelligence analysis is critical in determining the position of tracked topics of interest in relation to competitors or other topics with high rates of interaction.

When was each top topic trending?

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Signals, Synthesio’s AI-powered trend detection tool additionally follows the timeline of mentions of tracked topics. You can very clearly see when conversations about certain topics trend. When Nipsey Hussle was killed in late March of 2019, mentions spiked around the death of the American rapper and then peter off. The Disney Plus timeline starts slow as the platform is announced but then grows exponentially as we get closer to the release date.

This may seem self-explanatory, but the timeline is an important metric to track because it provides a visual for when topics are trending. This helps business leaders to understand the general state of online conversations. Thanks to social intelligence analysis, we reveal important trends about public figures. Antonio Brown made news this year due to sexual assault charges and reckless behavior as a controversial member of the NFL. Brown reappeared multiple times over the year, once in late February and once in early September. Now the question remains whether or not the athlete will be allowed to continue playing professionally.

How quickly does a topic trend?
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Tracking spikes of online engagement are an additional metric in order to track the web presence of important topics. We can see that in July, a spike of interaction for Cameron Boyce is the largest jump seen on the chart. Boyce was a Disney channel actor who suddenly passed away due to a seizure, causing a huge outburst of support online for his family and friends. This resulted in a large jump, followed by a pretty significant drop of interest and interaction afterward.

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We can see from just a small snippet of the compiled media wall shows that the years most searched topics are diverse. We can see the diversity of types of posts and subject matter. Through sophisticated social intelligence analysis, we are able to see which posts made the biggest splash online.

Where were people talking about this stuff?

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34% of the conversation about these five topics occurred on Twitter. Forms and Reddit combined came in second at 32%. Third, YouTube interactions and comments came in at 24% of total online conversation. Determining where conversations are happening is critical in order to know where to focus efforts and target the right audience.

Looking to ring in the New Year with some powerful social listening tools? Synthesio’s team would be happy to give you a quick demo.