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The Late Whitney Houston Was The Year's Hottest Search

Whitney Houston in 2004.
Kevin Winter

The Feb. 11 death of singing superstar Whitney Houston sent her fans rushing to the Web, Google says in Year-End Zeitgeist Report about things that "piqued your curiosity" in 2012.

Her name is atop Google's most-searched lists in three categories — general searches, people and performing artists.

Houston got more attention than "Gangnam style," "Hurricane Sandy," the presidential election and even "Kate Middleton pictures released."

Google notes that:

"While it might not be surprising to see that tragic natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy ranked highly (#3 on the global trending list), it is reassuring to find searches like [donate to Sandy] spiking as well."

By the way, it appears many Two-Way readers enjoy year-end lists.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.
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