Every year Google releases the top 10 searches of the previous 12 months, both for the US and Globally, did you Google all of these in 2018?

US Searches

1. World Cup
2. Hurricane Florence
3. Mac Miller
4. Kate Spade
5. Anthony Bourdain
6. Black Panther
7. Mega Millions Results
8. Stan Lee
9. Demi Lovato
10. Election Results

Google has been conducting research into browser ad injectors and while the full report isn't going to be published until May 1st, they have released some interesting bits of information.  Ad injectors are programs that insert ads or replace existing ads on webpages you are visiting.

The study is being conducted with researches at UC Berkeley and is based on a sample of 100 million page views from users using FireFox, Internet Explorer and Chrome.

Google released the following as a snipit of the upcoming report:

• Ad injectors were detected on operating systems (Mac and Windows), and web browsers (Chrome, FireFox, Internet Explorer) that were included in our test.
• More than 5% of people visiting Google sites have at least one ad injector installed. Within that group, half have at least two ad injectors installed and nearly one-third have at least four installed.
• Thirty-four percent of Chrome extensions injecting ads were classified as outright Malware.
• Researchers found 192 deceptive Chrome extensions that affected 14 million users; these have since been disabled. Google now incorporates the techniques researchers used to catch these extensions to scan all new and updated extensions.

It's likely the snipit was released to let consumers know that Google is actively working to fight the growing issue.

Image from Google's Online Security Blog Report - "Out with unwanted ad injectors

Every December Google releases the top 10 searches of the previous 12 months, both for the US and Globally, did you Google all of these in 2014?

US Searches

1. Robin Williams
2. World Cup
3. Ebola
4. Malaysia Airlines
5. Flappy Bird
6. ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
7. ISIS
8. Ferguson
9. Frozen
10. Ukraine

Global Searches

1. Robin Williams
2. World Cup
3. Ebola
4. Malaysia Airlines
5. ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
6. Flappy Bird
7. Conchita Wurst
8. ISIS
9. Frozen
10. Sochi Olympics

Very similar, although it looks like the Flappy Bird marketing team needs to pick up their global marketing.

In case you're wondering who or what Conchita Wurst is I'll save you the need to Google it, unless of course you'd like to add to Google's data with your search.

Conchita Wurst is an Austrian Singer.

On the heels of our last post about the top Google searches for 2014, let's take a look at the top Websites from 1996 to 2013.  It's easy to forgot how dominant AOL once was.

• 1996 - AOL
• 1997 - AOL
• 1998 - AOL
• 1999 - AOL
• 2000 - AOL
• 2001 - AOL
• 2002 - AOL
• 2003 - Yahoo
• 2004 - Yahoo
• 2005 - Yahoo
• 2006 - Yahoo
• 2007 - Yahoo
• 2008 - Google
• 2009 - Google
• 2010 - Yahoo
• 2011 - Google
• 2012 - Google
• 2013 - Yahoo

To see the full list of the top 20 sites per year from comScore / Media Metrix go to the Washington Post Article.