With the end of the year fast approaching and many Mississippi residents beginning to consider their resolutions for the year ahead, it’s the time of the season to reflect on the year that was. Luckily, thanks to the team at Google Trends, we know which elements of the American cultural zeitgeist residents of the Magnolia State searched for the most in 2023.
Whether it be football-related or a surging tech trend like artificial intelligence, Mississippi residents searched far and wide for answers to their varying questions in 2023, with several topics seeing elevated search traffic.
Utilizing Google Trends, BetMississippi.com briefly stepped away from our Mississippi sports betting coverage and analyzed the most searched terms in the state of Mississippi from Jan. 1, 2023 to Dec. 10, 2023. We finalized the Top 10 queries by utilizing the terms that have seen the biggest increase in search volume over the year 2023.
Mississippi’s Most Searched Terms of 2023
What Terms Surged The Most In 2023?
The terms with the biggest jump in search traffic in 2023 included a Buffalo Bills safety and two terms related to artificial intelligence, showing how eclectic the state’s Google patterns were overall. Searches for “Damar Hamlin” were the biggest mover in 2023, with a 2,550% increase in volume year-over-year, thanks to the 24-year-old Bills safety suffering a near-tragic injury against the Cincinnati Bengals on Jan. 2. Hamlin’s injury inspired many Americans to dive into Google to dig for updates on his condition, which allowed Hamlin to beat out two different versions of AI as the most searched for term in 2023.
“ChatGPT” and “Character AI” were Nos. 2 and 3, respectively, in Mississippi during the year, with the former seeing a 1,575% year-over-year increase in searches, the latter +1,100%. Rounding out the top five in Mississippi were online marketplace “Temu” (+1,050%) and “Colorado Football” (+850%),. “Weather 10 Days” (+800%) and “Sound of Freedom” (+750%) were the next closest.
The rest of Mississippi’s Google search traffic top 10 included “Super Bowl 2023” (+700%), “Cadence Bank” (+350%), and “Chumba Casino” (+140%).
Several of those terms had to do with college or NFL football, including the Deion Sanders phenomena early in the CFB season at Colorado and the early February surge in Big Game search traffic. All in all, the state’s top 10 illustrated how wide Mississippi residents’ interests were in 2023, painting a picture of how unique our relationship with the country’s preeminent search engine is.
Author
Christopher Boan is a writer at BetMississippi.com specializing in covering state issues. He has covered sports and sports betting in Arizona for more than seven years, including stops at ArizonaSports.com, the Tucson Weekly and the Green Valley News.