The Rio Olympics were the top global sporting event on Google’s list of 2016’s top trending search terms. Across the world, the Olympics were second only to the U.S. election in the global news category, and Michael Phelps and Simone Biles were the third and fifth, respectively, highest trending people.
Google’s yearly list of trending terms are not the most searched of 2016, but the terms that had the highest spike in search volume in 2016 as compared to 2015.
In the U.S., the Olympics were ahead of the election to be the No.