The newest Year in Search round-up from Google is in. Which big questions and names were people across Germany feeding the search engine in 2024?
Germany’s most common googles in 2024
2024 has been an eventful, sometimes worrying and confusing year in Germany and many people were turning to the world’s biggest search engine to fill in their knowledge gaps.
Sporting events dominated the most commonly googled general terms. With Germany hosting in 2024, it comes as little surprise that the European Football Championships (Euros) was the top search term this year. Around 2,68 million people watched matches in the 10 German cities which hosted the competition from mid-June to mid-July, with Spain taking the top title at the final in Berlin.
The lesser-known (Men’s) European Handball Championship was the second-most googled term. Over 18 days in January, six German cities hosted the tournament - won by France - which a record-breaking one million spectators attended.
Just like the rest of the world, Germany watched on as US citizens prepared to go to the polls on November 5. “US election” was the third-most commonly googled term. Sporting news made another appearance in fourth place, as attention turned to legendary German football player Franz Beckenbauer when he died aged 78 in January. Beckenbauer was internationally known as one of the best football players of all time.
But the beginning of a big European summer kicked off, not with the Euros championships, but the European Union elections in early June. In the EU election, with the highest voter turnout since reunification, Germany’s CDU / CSU centre-right party were the big winner, taking 30 percent of the ballots. Despite January’s mass protests against the AfD and its uncovered “remigration” plans, the far-right part also made significant gains, taking 15,9 percent of the vote.
An appearance of the Northern Lights over Germany in October meant the natural wonder got a look in, farmers’ protests against abolishing tax breaks, which stretched across the end of 2023 into 2024 were a common enquiry, alongside train strikes in March, Dubai chocolate and recently departed One Direction star Liam Payne.
What was Germany asking Google this year?
The direct questions that the people of Germany posed to Google painted a broad picture of 2024’s most significant events. People wanted to better understand a pressing issue, asking “Why are the farmers striking?” and equally pressing “Why is Cora out?”, a reference to the voluntary departure of German media personality Cora Schumacher from the celebrity jungle.
Another famous departure, “Why was Lindner fired?” a reference to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s (SPD) decision to sack Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) “on the basis of trust”, was the third-most googled “why” question.
Private documents have since exposed that Lindner “meticulously planned” his departure to bring down the SPD-Greens-FDP coalition. A consequence of Lindner’s actions is the now imminent confidence vote Scholz faces on December 16, which led us all to ask, “What is a confidence vote?”.
Finally, afraid to publicly age themselves, adults took to Google to understand some teen lingo, asking “What is a Talahon?” The Arabic term was voted one of Langenscheidt’s youth words of the year.
Originally meaning “come here”, “Talahon” has been popularised by young Germans with migrant backgrounds to describe themselves, and is specifically associated with boys who wear fake designer clothes, skinny jeans, laptop bags or bumbags and perform hyper-masculinity in TikTok videos. Since “Talahon” has been used in this new way, it has also been adopted as a racist term to associate German boys and young men with migrant backgrounds with anti-social behaviour and crime.
Most-googled terms in Germany in 2024
In all, here are the 10 most googled terms in Germany for 2024:
- European Football Championships
- European Handball Championships
- US election
- Franz Beckenbauer
- European Union election
- Olympics
- Stefan Raab
- Paralympics archery
- Solingen
- Liam Payne
Here are the most commonly asked “Warum, Was and Wie” questions this year:
- Why are farmers striking?
- Why is Cora out?
- Why was Lindner fired?
- What is a Talahon?
- What is a confidence vote?
- What is a caliphate?
- How old is Stefan Raab
- How long does the Olympics last?
- How long will the farmers’ protest last?
Thumb image credit: Joe Tabacca / Shutterstock.com