Cogito ergo sum? These days it is better to ‘search, therefore I am’. Google searches continue to be the mirror that reveals to us what our manias, obsessions, habits and fears are. And nothing beats Google’s annual ranking to find out how the year that is about to end went. “A Year of Searches” meticulously immortalises the peaks of curiosity of Italians (not the most frequent searches in absolute terms, but those with the greatest increase), which give us an unexpected portrait: less frivolous than one might think, and decidedly more curious and colourful. There are twelve sections in the ranking: Why, Adii, TV series, Movies, Singers, Recipe, How to dress, What it means, Song lyrics, How to do it and How to cook. The whole range of our obsessions, curiosities, foibles and paranoia.
Why: when curiosity reigns
Typing ‘why’ into Google is like knocking on the door of our collective consciousness. The most searched question of the year is “Why did Israel attack Iran?”. Geopolitics ‘for dummies’ followed by variations on the Trump-Iran, Israel-Gaza theme. But soon after the big international issues, come decidedly more local curiosities: “Why Leo XIV?” (the pope), “Why doesn’t Olly go to Eurovision?” (the drama), “Why was Cecilia Sala arrested?” and even “Why does The Couple close?” – proving that local and global coexist in the same mental timeline of Italians.
We want to know everything
The section “What does it mean?” is a museum of our cultural uncertainties. Paraphilia reigns supreme, followed by “Career Separation” (the year’s markedly political-judicial theme), through to gems such as “What does bed rotting mean?”, the Gen Z trend of spending entire days in bed, which evidently has also intrigued boomers. This is followed by ACAB, Augustinian, Cubicularian: a mix of antagonistic acronyms, ecclesiastical philosophy and Latinorum that says a lot about the fragmentation of contemporary cultural references.
How is it done?
The chapter on our ‘existential tutorials’ is decidedly colourful. A list that moves fluently from health & fitness to cooking, from technology to health, in a mix that perfectly photographs our everyday life between lightness and necessity. In 2025 we asked for everything: porridge, tanatopraxis, abdominal vacuum, screenshots on the PC, action figures, iced coffee, dry brushing, casatiello, mussel soup and colonoscopy.
The Festival (which never ends)
Sanremo is a national obsession, you know. But seeing Lucio Corsi and Olly at the top of the list of the most sought-after personalities – and then again among the singers – confirms that the Festival continues to be the aargument that reigns everywhere, from the bar to the workplace, the totem of Italian curiosity. Corsi, a Tuscan singer-songwriter with surreal poetics, and Olly, a pop phenomenon from TikTok, represent the two souls of contemporary Italian music: the auteur and the mainstream. Alongside them, Marcella Bella (evidently the subject of a San Remo rediscovery), Serena Brancale and a Brunori Sas who never goes out of fashion.
Dining and Cooking