Euro 2016, Pokemon and Bowie lead UK search queries

Google has revealed that “Euro 2016” was its UK search engine’s top trending term of the year.

The football championship was followed by the game Pokemon Go, the late singer David Bowie and US President-elect Donald Trump in its rankings.

Google’s list is based on words and phrases that stand out from the norm to get round the fact that an unfiltered version would be little changed from one year to the next.

The top global term was Pokemon Go.

Perhaps surprisingly, the death of Prince ensured the singer was more “googled” by UK users than either Brexit or EU referendum – the two phrases are grouped together in the firm’s rankings.

Google UK top trending searches of 2016:

Euro 2016
Pokemon Go
David Bowie
Donald Trump
Prince
EU referendum/Brexit
Alan Rickman
Olympics
US election
Deadpool
Google global trending searches of 2016:

Pokemon Go
iPhone 7
Donald Trump
Prince
Powerball
David Bowie
Deadpool
Olympics
Slither.io
Suicide Squad
The US firm has also analysed how its search tools are used to rank UK queries by topic, giving further insight into users’ fads and preoccupations over the past 12 months.

Pikachu and his fellow monsters were obviously on a lot of minds because “How to play Pokemon Go?” was not only the most popular “How to…?” question, but “What is Pokemon Go?” was also the most popular “What is…?” entry too.