Just as it is effective to know what a person has been thinking lately with a quick sweep of his computer’s browser history, the best way to get a good look at what a country has been up to is to see what they have up on their Google search profile.
Search giant Google released their regular end-of-year list of top searches of countries around the world. Here are the top Google searches for Indonesia for the year that has been.
Surprisingly, ‘Pokemon Go’ was the overall top search from Indonesia this year. This won’t however come as a surprise for those who had smartphones and was part of the Pokemon Go craze. As with any trend, the Pokemon fever eventually waned and everyone lost interest in the app, but still everybody had a great time catching a Bulbasaur, Squirtle or Weepinbell at the Museum Indonesia, Monas or Grand Indonesia Shopping Town.
The excellent perspective Indonesia had for viewing the total eclipse in March made ‘Gerhana Matahari’ (or solar eclipse) the second top search. The country’s team ‘Timnas Indonesia’ also made it to the top with a big boost from their epic performance at the AFF Suzuki Cup.
While ‘Donald Trump’ showed the Indonesians’ concern for the year’s biggest political disaster, millions of searches on ‘Gempa Aceh’ (earthquake in Aceh) revealed the country’s concern for the victims of one of the year’s massive national disasters.
Obviously “Jakarta Governor Basuki ‘Ahok’ Tjahaja Purnama” topped the list of searches on Indonesian personalities with all the bad press he got from his alleged blasphemy case. ‘Buni Yani,’ the man who created the controversy on Ahok’s blasphemy case with his edited version of the governor’s speech in the Thousand Islands that went viral, came third.
See: Our Most Popular Stories of 2016
‘Sri Mulyani’ came second with a great number of people clearly pleased with her return as economics minister. ‘Wayan Mirna Salihin,’ the woman whose murder by cyanide coffee poisoning sent Jessica Kumala Wongso to twenty years’ imprisonment, is fourth on the list. Politician Nusron Wahidli of the Golkar part made it to the top 5.
For the country’s top search on national events, the terrorist attack in Jakarta in January, ‘Bom Sarinah’ (Sarinah Bombing), which left eight people dead (four civilians, four terrorists), topped the list. The religious minority ‘Gafatar’ landed second, as their community was attacked by an angry mob early this year and their leaders were arrested for treason and blasphemy in another case of the country’s growing religious intolerance.
The case of Dimas Kanjeng of ‘Kasus Dimas Kanjeng’ came third; Kanjeng, the cult leader who claimed to create money through magic, was arrested for murder charges. Another major concern for Indonesians this year was the ‘Harga rokok’ (cigarette prices) when rumors spread about their prices going up to Rp 50,000 per pack (that thankfully for many smokers did not happen). The brutal rape and murder of 13-year-old Yuyun in April, which urged activists to rally against the rampant incidents of violence against women, made it to the list in this category.
The ‘Panama Papers’ was listed as the the most searched about international event, and the gold-medal-winning badminton player ‘Liliyana Natsir’ was the Indonesian athlete that was most searched this year. ‘The Conjuring 2’ was the year’s most searched movie title in the country, and ‘Meme Valak’ earned the slot for the most searched for meme was about a character in the Conjuring 2. Finally, ‘Dia
– Anji’ was the most searched for song, while the ‘Samsung Z2’ bagged the most searched-for gadget title.
For the complete list of people, events and other categories that made it to the list of Indonesia’s top searches for the year, see here.