“This year, when Google celebrates its 25th anniversary, there will not only be a retrospective of 2023, but rather of the last quarter of a century as a way of showing which themes, moments, personalities, and other topics were the most searched on Google worldwide” and “among the most searched athletes comes one of Portugal’s greatest figures (…) Cristiano Ronaldo”.

The Portuguese football player “was the most searched athlete on Google in the last 25 years globally, which is equivalent to another title for his extensive list of achievements”, says the technology company, in a statement.

“António Costa and Pope Francis lead the most searched national and international names” this year, as “the Portuguese were interested in the Pope's coming to Portugal, as part of World Youth Day, and with the dismissal of the still first -minister that culminated in the scheduling of elections for March 2024”.

In the most popular films, series and programs category in Google's search in Portugal in 2023 are “Oppenheimer, Barbie and Rabo de Peixe“, and in the song category “Pedro Mafama was the Portuguese singer who stood out in Google searches and made Portugal sing 'Olarilolé, Olariloléi'”.

“The Portuguese were also very interested in Shakira's love life, making the Colombian singer one of the top three in the category, led by the British rock band Coldplay”.

Taking into account the war in Israel and Gaza, the Portuguese wanted to know ‘What is Hamas?’ even more than knowing about the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT, says the technology company.

“Google’s Year in Search is an annual look at the ‘top’ trends in Google search. When compiling the year 2023 in search, we analysed the aggregation of trillions of searches throughout the year” and trends “generally better identify what caught people's attention most in 2023 compared to 2022”, explains Google.