Zimbabwe’s ‘breakout’ search terms on Google this month

A useful tool to analyse web search trends (and therefore measure people’s interests) is Google Insights for Search. The tool computes the number of searches done for given search terms relative to the total number of searches done on the popular search engine over time.

The trends show the percentages by which a search term’s popularity has increased on Google Search. In some cases, interest in a particular subject can increase so phenomenally Google classifies it as a “breakout” search. Specifically, when a search term is listed as a “Breakout” instead of an actual percentage it means that the search term has experienced a change in growth greater than 5,000%.

This month, four breakout searches registered on Google and all four are for the late Retired General Solomon Mujuru. Here’s a screenshot of part of the Google insights for Search for the month: