Yesterday , search giant, Google released its 2023 ‘Year in Search’ for Nigeria, showing Apple’s recently launched iPhone 15 and Tecno Spark 10 Pro as the top two trending searched devices in the country this year.

Google’s Year in Search is a yearly analysis that reveals the top trending lists and also spotlighted what the world searches to see, learn, and do. It showcased the most popular searches, notable individuals, actors, musicians, topics, questions, and other subjects that captured Nigerians’ attention throughout the year. On the top 10 devices being searched for, phones from the Transsion group, including iTel and Infinix dominate the list.

According to Google, this year’s results showed a heightened interest in lifestyle, local politics, and notable personalities such as Moyo Lawal, Peter Obi, and Oladipupo Oladimeji, aka Oladips, who topped the trending people’s list.

Providing a breakdown of the searches across different categories ranging from people to musicians, videos, and movies among others, Google said: “Significantly moving up to first place in 2023’s top trending musicians’ category is Asake, followed closely by singer Khalid and rapper Shallipopi, with Asake’s song “Lonely at the top” also topping the search list of trending songs. Nigerians were interested in entertainment this year as can be reflected in the search for “Gangs of Lagos”, “Shanty Town,” and “Soso lyrics”, all of which topped the movies, video series, and lyrics categories.

“Singer Mohbad, Yoruba actor, Murphy Afolabi and actor and film producer Saint Obi, all of whom passed this year, topped the search list for loss, with Mohbad also topping the category for the most searched Nigerian news topic in 2023.”
“Other top-searched questions like “Who is the winner of the 2023 presidential election?”, “What is fuel subsidy?” showed how concerned Nigerians were with the political and economic affairs of the country and how Google Search was used to learn more about their interests in 2023,” Google added.

The data released by the search giant also revealed that many Nigerians were searching for the meaning of subsidy as it topped the ‘what is’ questions on the platform this year.

This curiosity may not be unconnected with the announcement of subsidy removal by President Bola Tinubu during his inauguration on May 29 this year and the attendant increase in prices that followed. This was followed by the search for ‘what is idan’ a social media slang that gained popularity earlier this year.