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By Faizel Patel

Senior Digital Journalist


Alopecia, Will Smith, Nhlanhla Lux: This is what South Africans Googled in March

Do you know to split the screen on a laptop? This was another search on Google among what is a computer, ubuntu and perjury?


“Will Smith just smack the S**** out of me.” These were infamous words of Chris Rock at the Academy Awards after he joked and made a mockery of Jada Pinkett Smith’s baldness at this year’s Oscar.

What about Bafana Bafana’s performance against France in the friendly, with the term “bunch of losers’ reverberating across South Africa after the match.

A round-up of the top search queries generated by South Africans based on Google search activity shows that you weren’t alone.

The deaths of prominent Hip Hop musician DJ Dimplez and Australian cricketer Shane Warne early on in March dominated the search results.

South Africans’ love of sport was clear with seven of the top ten search terms emanating from sporting fixtures and events.

The Women’s Cricket World Cup ranked eighth on the list after the South African women’s cricket team kept the country on the edge of their seats throughout the series.

The top two searched questions were health-related questions linked to celebrities in the news.

Following the Oscar slap incident, people turned to Google for more information on alopecia, the hair loss condition that actress Jada Pinkett Smith has been diagnosed with.

Do you know to split the screen on a laptop? This was another search on Google among what is a computer, ubuntu and perjury?

They also wanted to know what is wrong with Zola, who is Nhlanhla Lux Dlamini and what is DRS in F1?

People also sought out more information on aphasia, after the family of famous Hollywood actor, Bruce Willis, announced he would quit acting after being diagnosed with the condition which affects the ability to speak, read and write.

Here’s what South Africans wanted to know in March:

Search trends information is gathered from data collated by Google based on what South Africans have been searching for.

Google processes more than 40,000 search queries every second, translating to more than a billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide.

‘Top searches’ indicate searches that topped Google’s charts while ‘Most searched’ queries are the most popular terms for the past 15 years, ranked in order by volume of searches.

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