The top Google Search trends in South Africa for 2025
2025 was the year of cheating CEOs, 'KPop Demon Hunters' and Labubus, but what were South Africans searching for on Google?
Another year is about to come to an end, and it's time for everyone to publish their end-of-year lists.
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People have shared their Spotify Wrapped and reflected on all the crazy (and sometimes unbelievable) things that happened in 2025.
Now it's time to see what everyone has been Googling.
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Google has released their annual Year in Search, and according to it, the new Google Search AI tools played an interesting role in how people asked questions.
"People asked questions in more conversational ways, like they would while talking to a friend. This year, we saw people asking “What’s the deal with…” queries more than ever. (One popular example? “What’s the deal with 6-7?”)".
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How it works:
- Google identifies the search terms that saw the highest increase in traffic between January 1, 2025 and November 25, 2025, compared to the same period last year.
- By measuring the spike in interest rather than the total number of searches, they can identify the trends that were unique to 2025.
- The lists are not based on the "most searched" terms because generic words like "weather" or "news" are popular every year and do not reflect what was unique about the year.
- Searches list: The top trending searches overall, analysed using Google Trends internal tools, during the time period.
- Passings list: People who died during the time period.
- People list: The top trending people who were alive during the time period. It doesn’t cover those who have passed away.
- News: The top trending search queries to have been related to news stories during the time period. The list is not exhaustive or comprehensive of all news stories that occurred, but is based on those that experienced the most significant increase in search interest during that time period.
- Google Maps and Hum to Search lists: These are compiled from Google Maps and Google Hum to Search data, not from Google Trends. Maps data represents the top or most-searched. Hum to Search represents those that trended the most.
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Here is a look at some of the international and local Google search trends for 2025.
- Searches for “Tell me about…” are up 70% year over year.
- Queries starting with “How do I…” reached an all-time high with a 25% increase from last year. (Including timely questions like “How do I know if my Labubu is real?" at the top.)
Global
Trending
Entertainment
Sports
Lifestyle & Gaming
Hum to Search
Maps
South Africa
Top trending (How to)
Loss
Artist
Actor/Actress
Top trends (When is)
Recipes
Sports
Top trends
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