YouTube, Facebook and Hafiz are fastest-rising queries in KSA

YouTube was the fastest-rising search term on Google in Saudi Arabia in 2011, according to the search engine. This was followed by Facebook and “Hafiz,” a national program for job seekers in the Kingdom. When searching for people, Saudis were most interested in a diverse range of personalities including Muammar Qaddafi, chef Manal Alalem and imam Maher Almaakulai. The three top queries on Google News in 2011 were for singers Mohamad Abdo, Khaled Abdul Rahman, and Alalem. The cricket World Cup was the most-searched item in the sports category followed by the football World Cup and wrestling. “Mohamed Abdu songs” was the most searched term in entertainment followed by Eish Elli and Cartoon Network Arabic. “Every day we get more than 1 billion searches on Google for information worldwide and today we are very excited to share with Internet users in the Kingdom the Google Zeitgeist, which reveals the year-end results of the fastest-rising search queries they have conducted throughout the year,” said Abdulrahman Tarabzouni, regional manager for emerging Arabia at Google. Google’s annual Zeitgeist is a look into the year’s top searches, offering a unique perspective on the year’s major events and hottest trends based on searches conducted worldwide. “Zeitgeist” is a German term meaning “the spirit of the times.” In line with this, each year Google analyzes the billions of search queries received to assess new trends. Google Zeitgeist presents the fastest-rising term rather than the most popular one, which consistently feature website names and common terms like “weather.” On the other hand, fastest-rising terms are topics that have gained interest within the last 12 months and hence better identify what people were curious about in 2011 relative to 2010. Google Zeitgeist tools rely on anonymized, aggregated counts of how often certain search queries occur over time. The worldwide results can be found on