Google, Bing and Yahoo are search engines that a lot of us turn to when looking for information on all sorts of topics. The searches that we do may seem arbitrary but at the end of the day, they give us an insight into what our interests are and what may be important to us.

As we go along searching the internet for A, B, C, all the search engines keep track of and collate all of our searches (unless you search in incognito or private mode). The search engines use this information to their advantage and they do make some of the information publicly available. Here is a run down of the top Google searches per month in Zimbabwe for 2014:

January – CHAN results

Zimbabweans have an insatiable appetite for football and the start of the year saw the 2014 African Nations Championship being played in South Africa with many of us glued to our screens to watch all the drama unfold.

February – Bona Mugabe

After CHAN, our attention was diverted to Bona Mugabe who tied the knot with Simba Chikore in an elaborate wedding that was attended by high level dignitaries and at a cost that was said to have run into the millions.

March – Malaysia plane

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 did not only see Zimbabweans but the entire world turn their attention to MH370 which on the 8th of March took off from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on its ways to Beijing, China and disappeared en-route with over 200 passengers on board. To this day (as far as the ‘world’ in concerned – there are a few conspiracies about it’s disappearance), the where about of the aircraft is still a mystery.

April – UEFA results

April saw people once again being able to get a football fix and saw the quarter and semi-finals of UEFA Champions League with the final result being a 4 – 1 win for Real Madrid over Club Atlético de Madrid.

May – Alick Macheso

2014 was a particularly difficult year for sungura musician Alick Macheso which included reports of him performing an unspeakable act on his child and the tumultuous divorce to his second wife, Tafadzwa Mapako.

June – World Cup fixtures

For the third time in the year, Zimbabwe and the world got a good dose of football and had the opportunity to watch various nations from around the world battle it out in Brazil to be crowned world champions.

July – Argentina

The lead in to July also saw people searching for football related information. The top search was simply Argentina and July was the month in which the World Cup Finals were held between Germany and Argentina with Germany being crowned the world champions after a 1 – 0 win.

August – Ebola

A few West African countries were affected by an Ebola virus outbreak which was recorded as the worst in history. Thousands of people lost their lives and many countries around the world went into panic mode and put measures in place to try and stop the virus from reaching their nations.

September – SCOAN

SCOAN, The Synagogue, Church Of All Nations which is lead by the very popular and controversial Prophet T.B. Joshua topped search results after one of its buildings collapsed. More than 100 people lost their lives with most of them being from South Africa and the count also included an MDC official from Zimbabwe.

October – Grace Mugabe

This was the year where Grace Mugabe rose to prominence by first of all being awarded a PhD that she apparently completed in two months and then a few months after that, being named as the head of Zanu-PF’s Women’s League. October was the month when Amai Dr Grace Mugabe went around on her ‘Meet The People Tour’ and had a lot to say (some of it not so gracefully) about various figures within Zimbabwe’s political arena.

November – Myles Munroe

For the second time in the year, Zimbabweans searched the internet for information linked to a religious figure. On the 9th of November, Christian evangelist Dr Myles Munroe was involved in a plane crash that took him, his wife and the lives of seven other people.

December – Zanu PF Congress

At the start of December, thousands of Zanu PF delegates from around the country descend on Harare for Zanu PF’s Elective Congress. The congress was seen by many as more that just that as certain actions were taken that pretty much saw Joice Mujuru’s fate being sealed and Grace Mugabe ascending to the head of the Women’s League.

Your turn; given that this is what we searched for the most on Google, does it give a good reflection of what we find important?