From start to finish, 2016 has delivered plenty of surprises to the world, so it should come as no shock that some of the year's most hotly-debated topics made an appearance in Google's annual "Year in Search" lists for 2016.
In the top 10 most searched-for terms on Google this year, "Pokemon Go" was crowned as the most popular term worldwide — specifically during the month of July — following the highly-anticipated release of the mobile game back in the summer.
Only a month after its initial release, "Pokemon Go" had supposedly earned $200 million in net revenue worldwide, according to estimates by Sensor Tower, an app intelligence firm.
Another popular technology term, iPhone 7, came in second after Apple released its latest smartphone device in September.
News that surprised media outlets, global citizens and at times financial markets, was frequently found in Google's top trending lists. The U.S. Election, terrorism, Brexit and the passing of world-renowned musicians, Prince and David Bowie, all ranked highly on the lists.
In Google's trending "Global News" list, the U.S. Election came out on top, with interest in the topic running particularly high on the week of the election vote, when the U.S. voted in Donald Trump as its next president.
Surprisingly though, the terms "Trump", "Election" and "Hillary Clinton" ranked eighth to tenth place in the U.S.' own top searches list, having been beaten by terms like "Powerball" (1st), "Hurricane Matthew" (3rd) and "Slither.io" (5th), a multiplayer game.
Topics surrounding the election featured heavily in other global trending lists as well, with the President-elect being the third most popular searched term in 2016. Trump was the most searched-for living person globally, followed in second by Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in sixth.
Cultural events including films, sports and popular national events were also highly-searched for worldwide, with top-grossing films "Deadpool" and "Suicide Squad" being the world's seventh and tenth most searched terms on Google, respectively.
Meanwhile, the U.S.' Powerball jackpot and the Brazil-based Olympics were also extremely popular, both trending highly in global and domestic market lists.
Here are the top-trending searches on Google globally, for 2016:
1) Pokemon Go
2) iPhone 7
3) Donald Trump
4) Prince
5) Powerball
6) David Bowie
7) Deadpool
8) Olympics
9) Slither.io
10) Suicide Squad
Click here, to see Google's "Year in Search 2016" lists both globally and for individual countries.
