Google reveals what Vietnamese searched for in 2016

By VnExpress December 15, 2016 | 05:26 am PT

Mobile game Pokemon Go, the top global Google search, is also among the top 10 searches in Vietnam. Photo by AFP

Games, lottery and pop culture were among the year's hot topics.

New Google trend results for 2016 show that Vietnamese internet users were big into sports and entertainment this year, though they also cared about the national university exam and global issues such as Syria, Zika and the U.S. election.

Slither, a mobile and browser game released in March this year, topped the list of Google searches in Vietnam, followed by Euro 2016.

Another global mobile game hit Pokemon Go, which was Google's most popular search of 2016, also made the top 10 list. Other search topics in Vietnam's top 10 were three local pop songs, a local gameshow, South Korean military romance "Descendants of the Sun", and Vietlott, the operator of Vietnam’s new American-style computerized lottery game Mega 6/45.

The list included one celebrity, Minh Beo, a Vietnamese comedian who was arrested during a tour of the U.S. in March and has been convicted of sexually assaulting a minor.

“Latest news about Minh Beo” and “Mega lottery results” were also among the ten news topics searched for in Vietnam this year. The top news search was Typhoon Haima followed by the passing grades for the university entrance exam.

Hoang Xuan Vinh, who bagged Vietnam’s first ever Olympic gold in Rio in August, was also in the top 10 news topics, together with the country’s U23 football team who played at several big regional games this year and won local fans with some strong performances.

Although Vietnamese people did not seem to look up politics much on the internet, when they did, the U.S. was their main interest.

Obama’s trip to Vietnam in May was the fifth most-searched news topic this year, while the U.S. presidential election last month was third among international news searches.

Other serious matters – the escalating tension in Syria and the spread of the mosquito-born Zika virus – were also popular news searches, as were Black Friday and the supermoon.

Nearly 49 million people in Vietnam, or more than half of the country’s population, are online.

Google first listed trending and top searches in the country in 2012. The university exam, traffic, TPP and Paul Walker were among the top searches last year.