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Nelson Mandela, Paul Walker, and iPhone 5S top Google's 2013 search list

Nelson Mandela, Paul Walker, and iPhone 5S top Google's 2013 search list

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gz2013
gz2013

Google is taking a look back over 2013 with its annual year-end zeitgeist, a report on the people, events, and trends that seem to have best captured the public's interest. For 2013, Google says that its top global-trending searches were led by Nelson Mandela, Paul Walker, and the iPhone 5S. Gadgets play a big role in the top 10, with Samsung's Galaxy S4 and Sony's PlayStation 4 coming in at numbers eight and nine, respectively. Though the Harlem Shake is ranked fifth, the rest of the list is filled largely by events rather than specific trends.

A few different ways to explore the trends

Glee star Cory Monteith and the Royal Baby are the list's final two entities, while the Boston Marathon and North Korea round out the top 10. A look at the top 100 is available as well, but Google isn't quite going to write it out for you: it'd rather you explore the list on your own. On its zeitgeist site, you can scroll around an endless collage of images that represent the most popular searches, from Windows 8.1, to "Wrecking Ball," to Atari Breakout.

If you're more curious about what people are interested in close to home, Google's got you covered too. It's also created a 3D map of the globe that lets you see the top five daily search trends in major cities around the world. After selecting a city, you'll be able to scrub forward and backward through time to see top interests down to the day. As usual, Google has also broken down the data by individual categories, listing everything from the most-searched car company (Tesla) to the most-searched celebrity breakup (Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth).