Canada’s top Google searches of 2019

What do the Toronto Raptors, Old Town Road, and beef stroganoff have in common?

They were all among the top things that Canadians searched for on Google over the past 12 months.

“Year in Search is a reflection of trillions of searches globally and this is anonymized, aggregated data, and what it shows us is sort of a baseline of curiosity,” says Alexandra Hunnings Klein, a Trends Expert with Google Canada.

The search engine releases a list every year detailing the most popular searches in any given country. The Canadian list includes categories for people, songs, movies, and recipes.

Klein tells NEWS 95.7's The Todd Veinotte Show that this year, Canadians were searching up their homegrown champions.

“The Toronto Raptors winning the NBA championship was the top trending search on Google, and just following that was Bianca Andrescu,” she says.

The search engine doesn't include evergreen searches, like Justin Bieber, on annual lists, because they are always popular.

“What these lists really shows, they're like a barometer to reflect back to Canadians how they've been searching for the last year,” Klein explains.

The list isn't broken down by province, but Klein says some searches are obviously made more popular by Maritimers.

“Hurricane Dorian is way up there, and so are Nova Scotia power outages,” Klein says. “I think that's just a credit to the people of Nova Scotia who are searching for questions about when their power is coming back on, and what will be the result of the hurricane.”

But searches like Kawhi Leonard, who topped the list of people-related searches, came from all across Canada.

“Canada has one baseball team, one basketball team, and so there's a national ownership over the success of the team,” says Klein.

Kawhi and the Raptors even made lists in other parts of the world.

“When Kawhi Leonard made that shot in the semi-finals, searches for him globally went up by 90 per cent, and that's including places like India, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic,” she adds.

In terms of music and pop culture, shows like Game of Thrones and Stranger Things were in the lead, and of course, Lil Nas X's Old Town Road.

“This was an unavoidable earworm,” says Klein, “And even if folks couldn't identify the name of the rapper or the name of the song, they definitely know the chorus.”

The search engine also tracked moments of tragedy. Searches for the death of American actor Luke Perry topped the losses list, and Klein says the Humboldt Broncos bus crash was a big topic.

“The effect that had on the country, and the trend of Sticks Out For Humboldt, so you really did see the country come together through a moment of great sorrow,” Klein says.

The food search category was dominated by recipes for beef stroganoff and coleslaw. 

“One of the things that surprises me is sort of how non-diverse our recipe food lists are. I would expect them to be more reflective of the different types of cuisine in Canada,” Klein says. “I would expect to see maybe a variety of dishes, maybe some Thai food or some Haitian food.”

As the 2010s wind down, Google also released lists compiling the entire decade of popular searches.

“In 2010, if we can go back there, was the Vancouver Olympics, and that was a top trend of that year,” says Klein.

Klein says the list is based on data, but there were many more things that resonated with Canadians that didn't make the list.

“The truth is there are so many things that could be on that list. We've had an incredible 10 years,” she says.

To see Canada's Year in Search, visit trends.google.com.