It may have seemed like the only thing anyone cared about — or pretended to care less about — in 2016 was the presidential campaign and election. But an analysis of state-by-state search terms for the year found that tech and TV were on the minds of many.
The folks at HighSpeedInternet.com took a look at Google’s top search keywords from coast to coast to discover that the iPhone 7 and the Netflix original series “Stranger Things” were most popular, with Apple’s latest smartphone holding the edge.
In large states such as Florida and Texas, and in Apple’s home state of California, iPhone 7 dominated. Across the upper Midwest and Western states, people hunkered down in front of their TVs and went for the streaming nostalgia sci-fi that was “Stranger Things.”
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton did manage to attract a few curious internet users in states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia — all of which were in play as swing states on Election Day.
A couple outliers managed to make it onto the map. For some reason Adidas was the most-Googled term in New York. And in Alaska it was Olympic Games, while Hawaii went for Pokémon Go.
HSI analysts used Google Trends data to determine the map’s results and started by identifying the top 25 terms googled in the U.S. over the past year. They then cross referenced state-by-state data for each of these terms to come up with the most searched term in each state.
