Google released its 2025 Year in Search data, and the top trending search term globally wasn't a celebrity death, political crisis, or cultural phenomenon. It was "Gemini"—Google's own AI product. The company that controls search has successfully made searching for information about its AI the most breakout query of the year.
Let's be clear about what this measures. Year in Search tracks queries with the fastest growth in search interest between January 1 and November 25, 2025, compared to the same period in 2024. This isn't "most searched" terms—generic queries like "weather" dominate total volume every year. This is what spiked hardest in 2025. And what spiked hardest was people searching for Google's AI.
That's either remarkable organic interest or the most successful marketing campaign in search history. Probably both.
Google explicitly clarifies these are "trending searches," not "top searched" or "most searched." The distinction matters. A query qualifies as "breakout" if it increased at least 5,000% year-over-year. That's not a typo—five thousand percent growth.
The Year in Search film features clips based on these breakout queries, though the precise on-screen text isn't always the exact search term—it's "inspired by" what people actually searched. This creative license lets Google craft narrative around data without being constrained by the awkward phrasing of actual queries.
The data runs through November 25, 2025, missing the final holiday shopping weeks and year-end news cycles. That timing bias means late-breaking stories don't make the list even if they dominated December.
Here's what the world searched for most intensely in 2025:
Searches:
News:
People:
Passings:
Notice anything strange? Charlie Kirk appears in four separate categories: searches (#3), news (#1 for assassination), people (not listed but implied), and passings (#1). Either 2025 was an extraordinarily eventful year for one conservative commentator, or something about these trending searches doesn't quite add up to reality.
This is where Year in Search data gets complicated. High search growth can indicate genuine cultural moments or mass confusion seeking clarification. When celebrity death hoaxes circulate on social media, search spikes as people verify whether it's real. The search trend exists. The underlying event might not.
Actors:
Movies:
TV Shows:
Song Lyrics:
Books:
Podcasts:
The entertainment categories reflect predictable patterns: prestige films getting Oscar buzz (Anora, Sinners), franchise anticipation (Superman, Squid Game 3, Thunderbolts*), BookTok driving romance novel searches (Colleen Hoover continues dominating), and podcast growth centered on personality-driven shows.
Charlie Kirk appearing as the #1 trending podcast alongside appearing in multiple other categories reinforces that something significant—real or manufactured—drove massive search interest around this figure in 2025.
Athletes:
Sports Teams:
Sports Events:
Cricket events dominate trending sports searches globally—Asia Cup, ICC Champions Trophy, ICC Women's World Cup—reflecting the sport's massive audience across India, Pakistan, and other South Asian markets. India vs England (#2 overall search) and India vs Australia (#5) further demonstrate cricket's search dominance.
The FIFA Club World Cup leads trending sports events, capitalizing on the expanded format and global reach of football/soccer.
Games:
Food & Drink Recipes:
Hot honey's dominance in recipe searches reflects viral food trends that migrate from TikTok to search. "Marry Me Chicken" represents the recipe-naming-as-marketing trend where dishes are branded for shareability rather than ingredients.
Gaming searches focus on unreleased or newly announced titles—Arc Raiders, Battlefield 6, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33—suggesting Year in Search captures anticipation more than actual gameplay. Strands, the New York Times puzzle game, appears because addictive daily games drive consistent search traffic.
Bookstores:
Transit Stations:
Botanical Gardens:
The Google Maps data reveals travel patterns and destination interests. Japan dominates transit station searches (four of top five), suggesting either massive tourism to Japan or Japanese users heavily searching local stations. Bookstore searches favor historic, Instagrammable locations—Livraria Lello, El Ateneo Grand Splendid, Shakespeare and Company—demonstrating how travel has become photography-driven.
This might be the most interesting data point. These aren't the most popular songs—they're the songs people heard and couldn't identify, forcing them to hum into their phones for recognition. It measures earworms and ambient exposure more than intentional listening.
The fact that a 1950s Connie Francis song appears alongside contemporary artists suggests either nostalgia content going viral or TikTok audio resurrection driving discovery of older music.
Google's AI product being the top trending search globally in 2025 is the data point everything else orbits around. This happened because:
Google promoted Gemini aggressively across every property they control—Search, YouTube, Android, Gmail, Docs. If you used a Google product in 2025, you saw Gemini promotions.
OpenAI's ChatGPT dominance forced Google to educate users that they have an AI alternative. Search interest followed marketing saturation.
AI reached mainstream consciousness in 2024-2025. People who'd never used ChatGPT wanted to understand what "Gemini" was when it started appearing in their search interface.
Google controls search. They can surface Gemini-related content, FAQs, and features in ways that naturally drive additional searches. The platform promoting its own product creates organic-looking growth that's actually platform-amplified.
The result: Google successfully made searching for information about its AI the defining search behavior of 2025. That's either the ultimate validation of AI's cultural importance or the ultimate demonstration of monopoly power in action.
Probably both.
Year-in-Search data is fascinating and, at the same time, essentially meaningless. It tells us what spiked in search interest, not why. It conflates genuine cultural moments with verification searches driven by misinformation. It captures anticipation for unreleased products alongside reactions to real events.
Charlie Kirk appearing across multiple categories could signal an extraordinarily consequential year. Or it could mean misinformation about him went viral, driving searches from people trying to figure out what actually happened. The data can't tell us which.
This is the fundamental limitation of search trend data: it measures behavior, not intent. High search volume can indicate importance, confusion, misinformation, or just effective marketing. Without additional context, we're reading tea leaves.
If we take Year in Search seriously—acknowledging its limitations—the data suggests 2025 was defined by:
AI reaching mainstream consciousness (Gemini at #1)
Global sports events driving massive engagement (Cricket dominance, Club World Cup)
Entertainment fragmentation (Mix of prestige films, franchise content, BookTok novels)
Misinformation or confusion driving verification searches (Celebrity death trending despite questionable accuracy)
Travel and experience-seeking (Bookstores, transit stations, botanical gardens trending in Maps)
Viral food trends migrating from TikTok to recipe searches (Hot honey, Marry Me Chicken)
That's a plausible summary of the year. It's also a collection of data points that could support almost any narrative about what mattered in 2025.
The truth is probably somewhere in the middle: some of this data reflects genuine cultural moments, some reflects effective marketing, some reflects confusion, and all of it reflects what Google's algorithms decided to highlight as "trending" based on their methodology.
And the fact that their own AI product sits at #1 tells you everything about who controls the narrative.
If you're trying to make sense of search data for strategy instead of just reading headlines, we can help you understand what actually matters.
Data from Google's 2025 Year in Search, measuring trending queries from January 1 to November 25, 2025.
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