Taylor Swift Is So Popular Google Booted Her From Its 2023 Trending Search List
Taylor Swift is pretty much everywhere these days, from selling out venues for musical performances to overtaking sports coverage whenever the Kansas City Chiefs play (courtesy of her relatively newfound relationship with Chiefs tight-end Travis Kelce). The sum of her popularity is Time Magazine's designation of Taylor Swift as Person of the Year 2023. However, one place you won't find the pop star is on Google's list of the top trending search for 2023. What gives?
Call it a snub, if you will, or any other related descriptor, but it's not an oversight. On the contrary, Google is well aware that the world at large is overtaken by everything Taylor Swift (except for Best Buy, which blamed sagging tech sales on Taylor Swift and funflation). In fact, her current boyfriend and Chiefs star made the list, as did some of her past flings, including musicians Joe Jonas and Matty Healy.
In a statement provided to Gizmodo, Google spokesperson Colette Garcia explains that Taylor Swift's absence is essentially because she's too popular.
"Top trending lists make for more colorful and interesting data pulls and are generally better at identifying what people were curious about in 2023 relative to 2022. The ‘trending’ queries are the searches that had a high spike in traffic over a sustained period in 2023 as compared to 2022. Taylor Swift is someone who consistently has a high amount of Search interest, not someone who had a big spike in 2023 as compared to 2022," Garcia explained.
The reasoning makes sense, as does Taylor Swift's omission when put into that context. And hey, we won't lose any sleep over who and/or what does and does not make Google's search trends list. At the same time, it's an interesting disclaimer that, if we're to criticize Google, should be made more obvious. While Taylor Swift is the probably the most high-profile omission based on Garcia's explanation, she's probably not the only one.
Musicians aside, our audience is likely more interested in the top searches for games. According to Google, the top five (in order) included Hogwarts Legacy, The Last of Us, Connections, Battlegrounds Mobile India, and Starfield.
That's an interesting mix, particularly Connections, which is a word game hosted by The New York Times. It undoubtedly grew in popularity on the coattails of Wordle, which NYT scooped up from its creator, Josh Wardle, in 2022 after it went viral.
Incidentally, The Last of Us occupied two different categories among the top trending searches of 2023, those being games and TV shows.
Top and Thumbnail Image Source: Eva Rinaldi Photography (via Flicker)
