Ozzy Osbourne, Oasis and Lily Allen. No, it’s not my eclectic Spotify playlist, it’s some of the most searched-for artists of 2025, according to Google’s newly released snapshot of a Year in UK Search.
As I mentioned in a previous blog post, keyword research isn’t just for SEO, it’s essentially the world’s biggest focus group, on a scale that can’t be matched anywhere else. If you want your finger on the pulse of what people are genuinely interested in, this is it.
Supposedly.
So what’s new this year?
The format has changed slightly, and very much leans into AI. If you’ve been living in a cave with no access to the news for the past 12 months, there’s now a handy ‘catch me up with AI’ button. Click it and you’ll get a neat little summary explaining why a person or term made it onto the UK’s most searched-for lists.
Nice idea in theory.
In practice, I’m not entirely convinced Google has nailed it this year.
Take Ed Gein, the infamous American serial killer, who landed third in the overall terms list, sitting behind Charlie Kirk and Ozzy Osbourne. This is apparently, thanks to the release of the latest Monster series on Netflix. I can understand the inclusion of Adolescence in the UK results, but Ed Gein? Alongside ‘snow warning’? In the UK? Wasn’t it a pretty mild winter overall?
Then there’s Mickey Rourke, who was reportedly the most Googled individual of the year following his controversial appearance on Celebrity Big Brother. He was ejected on day six, and yes, there was a fair amount of public furore, but was this really bigger than the biggest celebrity story of the year? I’m not claiming to know what that was but was Mickey really it?
Maybe it’s a generational thing but I’d bet my bottom dollar that more people were interested in the Prince Andrew shenanigans, which also had greater longevity over the course of the entire year.
Interestingly, the AI explanations start to wobble here. When it comes to Prince Andrew, the summary simply says that ‘no significant new information regarding Prince Andrew made him a top trending person in 2025, according to the available data’.
And regarding the inclusion of Bonnie Blue: ‘no significant public information or trending news in 2025 was found regarding an individual named Bonnie Blue’.
The explanation for the new Pope is even more confusing. According to Google’s AI Mode link, ‘there is no current or recent Pope called Leo XIV, and the query may relate to a fictional character or a misunderstanding’. Really? Did the entire UK collectively get this wrong, or is this just another example of AI confidently making things up?
To be fair, the footer warned me that ‘AI responses may include mistakes’, so mission accomplished, I guess.
In previous years, we’ve had much richer breakdowns, top news items, sports teams, actors, and even recipes. This year’s version feels oddly stripped back, almost basic.
Maybe the format itself is just tired.
The search roundup is usually a great talking point in the office. A chance to debate whether the results feel right and trace where trends came from. This year, that spark just wasn’t there.
Honestly, I think the various dictionaries’ choice of word-of-the-year do a better job of capturing the spirit of the year than Google has:
These, I’m liking…
- Merriam-Webster went with ‘slop’, content that lacks value, particularly AI-generated fluff.
- Oxford University Press chose ‘rage bait’, content deliberately designed to provoke anger and clicks.
- Cambridge selected ‘parasocial’, reflecting our one-sided relationships with public figures.
- And Dictionary.com gave us ‘67’, (spoken six-seven, not sixty-seven), a Gen-Alpha slang term with a fairly ambiguous meaning.
Put together, those feel far more revealing than a list that tells me Mickey Rourke briefly outranked everyone else on the internet.
So while Google’s Year in Search still has the scale and the data, this year it feels decidedly lacking.
Happy Christmas, everyone, especially to the Eowyns of the world, who should be celebrating this year, as according to Google, everyone will finally be able to pronounce your name. (In case you missed this ‘trend’, I’ll save you the trouble: ‘A-yo-win’.)