Google Hot Search - Introduction Malaysia Airlines, Raja Bomoh, Balotelli, All England and gonorrhea

Google Hot Search March 11, 2014, Malaysia and the Philippines

What is Google Hot Search

Have you ever wondered what's the latest trends in Google Search are? Have you heard of Google Project Zeitgeist? Well, Google Zeitgeist is a cumulative snapshot of search queries people make in Google over a time period. Project Zeitgeist closed on May 22, 2007 and was replaced by Google Trends. Google Trends is basically a web search statistic tool for the search data that massive search giant company. Of the interesting information that you might find interesting here is the Hot Search. It's basically a "Top 100" of the Google Search and you view it by country.

From time to time, I'll talk about the interesting "Hot Search" topics mainly for Malaysia and the Philippines. If you like what you see or probably have any suggestions on improvements, do drop me a message or comment.

What's "Hot" in Malaysia now?

Well with the Malaysia Airlines MH370 incident last week, most of the search keywords in the top 10 here are still influenced by the incident. FYI, the search is updated 1 to 2 hours from what I can see in the Google Trends site. As it stands now, more than 3 days since MH370 disappearance, and with no real indications or clues from the search and rescue operations that are ongoing, we'll most likely to see the top 10 Hot Search related to this incident for many days to come.

Snapshot of Google Images search for Badminton All England 2014

All England 2014

It seems this is the number 1 search currently (I haven't found a way to sort the searches with the embed code yet). Malaysians have always been obsess with badminton, it's basically a national pastime. You can see that even with the seemingly mysterious disappearance of MH370, we Malaysians can still find time for badminton. Now if you don't know what is "All England", it's one of the yearly highlight badminton tournaments, in comparison it would come pretty close to a Soccer World Cup or American Superbowl but for badminton. I say pretty close because the ultimate badminton tournament would be the Thomas Cup, which is held every 2 years, which by the way will be held this year in New Delhi, India. The last time Malaysia won this in 1992, a holiday was declared to celebrate the momentous win.

A strange case of national carrier, the unpredictable footballer and witch doctors

Malaysia Airlines, Raja Bomoh and Balotelli

Malaysia Airlines - Malaysia's national aircraft carrier
Raja Bomoh - It's Malay for Shaman/Witch Doctor King (Bomoh translates to traditional spiritual healer,witch doctor or shaman)
Balotelli - the last name of Mario Balotelli, the enigmatic and unpredictable professional Italian footballer currently with AC Milan.

If you weren't following the recent news, you would definitely be scratching your head thinking what's a national air carrier, a Malaysian witch doctor (or traditional spiritual healer) and a professional Italian footballer have in common. You could sum up maybe, the shaman "king" and the professional footballer had boarded the same flight with the national carrier, that could be the logical story and it could get a bit out of hand in some ways, but that's not what links the 3.

Let's get back to the gist of the story. As you know, flight MH370 is the Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight that lost contact and has been missing since last Saturday. After the passenger manifest of MH370 was released, it was confirmed that 2 passengers had used stolen passports. Further investigation had revealed that the 2 passengers had also bought the tickets the same time. In one of the press conferences yesterday, the DCA chief, when sharing the information of the CCTV investigation on the 2 dubious passengers, decided to reference the professional Italian footballer, in which he told the press the 2 passengers in questioned, had looked like Mario Balotelli. Talk about sensationalizing an already mysterious international case of a reliable aircraft vanishing!

To add to the mystery surrounding the whole incident, it was reported in the local news (and later international news), a popular "Raja Bomoh" or shaman, was supposedly invited by top government officials to KL International Airport to help locate the missing MH370.

Hot in the Philippines

Again, here we see keywords related to MH370. Just goes to show neighbors do care about each other. "Malaysia Airlines" is the top 1 search here. Next you'll see "Got to believe" which is the title of the popular Filipino TV series, which stars the current TV Pop Teen King and Queen, Daniel Padilla and Kathryn Bernado (girl next door beauty). The TV series will be ending its run this week, and is generating a lot of buzz from its viewers. Filipinos love their TV series!

Now, the thing that caught my eye, was the keyword "gonorrhea", which puzzles me because it's in the top 10 search keywords in the Philippines. To many it's a dreaded STD word to hear, especially if you've just went to a medical check up. It wouldn't surprise me that's it being searched, but to be in a top 10 search keyword for a country, is kinda disquieting to me. I did a quick search online (Google Search obviously) and didn't really find any major news mentioning the STD here in the Philippines.

I'd like to seek attention to my Filipino friends here, do please enlighten me if you know why "gonorrhea" is in the top 10 search keywords in the Philippines.

Check out the links below for detailed information on the things written.

sources:
Google - Project Zeitgeist
Google - Google Trends Hot Search
Astro Awani - "Raja Bomoh" news
The Malay Mail Online - DCA  2 suspects look like Mario Balotelli