Update December 26, 2024 | By Eric Van Buskirk

Ten years after this was posted, I’m returning with a Tableau Viz, word cloud, and deeper popular searches analysis: What people want to know about 2025.  No secrets this time.  The data is from ahrefs and is based on 10,000 search terms containing “2025” and “new year” five days before the new year. 

Emerging Patterns Across Categories

• Pragmatism Over Inspiration: Popular searches reflect a strong emphasis on practical concerns (e.g., retirement, vehicles, scheduling) rather than purely inspirational or aspirational topics.
• Chinese New Year: Beyond Search Volume and Clickstream Data
  Search volume and clickstream data alone can’t capture the complete picture of interest in the Lunar New Year. One key factor is the shifting start date, which varies yearly due to its alignment with the lunar calendar, unlike the fixed Gregorian calendar. This uncertainty likely drives a significant portion of the search activity as people look to confirm the exact date for 2024.
• Annual Cycles Reinforce Predictability: Events like Easter and the Super Bowl show how deeply ingrained seasonal behaviors are.
• Inflation Anxiety Dominates: Social Security searches and retirement age concerns highlight a growing public focus on adapting to economic realities.
• Global Curiosity: Many terms (e.g., “2025,” “when is Easter”) reflect international interest, suggesting opportunities for cross-border campaigns.
• “Project 2025” (3.49M U.S. searches, 4.04M globally): This massive search volume suggests a growing public interest in initiatives that promise societal, technological, or political changes by 2025.

  Extensive coverage has brought “Project 2025” into the public eye, sparking widespread discussion and debate.  “Project 2025,” developed by the Heritage Foundation, proposes unprecedented changes to the U.S. government structure (Reuters). One radical idea is to reclassify tens of thousands of federal civil service workers as political appointees, allowing for their replacement with individuals loyal to the administration. This move would significantly alter the traditional merit-based federal workforce structure.

  Another groundbreaking proposal involves eliminating the Department of Education, a federal entity established to oversee and support the nation’s educational system. Dismantling this department would significantly depart from historical federal involvement in education.

  The appointment of individuals associated with “Project 2025” to key positions in the incoming administration has heightened public curiosity. For instance, President-elect Donald Trump has selected figures involved in the project for significant roles, prompting people to seek more information.

  The project’s proposals, such as restructuring federal agencies and altering civil rights protections, have raised public concern. This apprehension has increased searches as citizens seek to understand potential impacts.

  Additionally, the project suggests enforcing laws against mailing abortion pills across state lines and criminalizing pornography, indicating a move towards more stringent federal regulations on personal freedoms. These measures represent a notable shift from previous federal policies concerning individual rights.

  These proposals reflect a transformative vision for the federal government’s role and structure, prompting widespread public interest and debate.

From 2014

This word cloud of popular keywords by search volume was created using a dataset we at SEMrush have access to internally.  What’s the big deal about analyzing top searched keywords?  I challenge you to find this data.  Search volume is an extremely difficult metric for our developers to compile.  It’s a secret sauce, but it’s also not something that just starts with “most popular.” 

To find the most popular, we have to calculate the search volume for 4,000,000 in the USA, and our internal data tables let us analyze it after the raw data is brought together.

The results I found of the top 1000 are nothing short of a “shocker” from my keyword-geek POV.  Most unfortunately, I  assumed the “P” word would win out by far.  Craigslist?  Huh?  Yes, people like to search for Craigslist terms in many different ways, and they do this a LOT!  Is it the most popular website?  No.  Currently, it ranks as the website that gets the tenth most visits from searches according to the SEMrush Rank.

People know Craigslist.  31 of the top 1000 searches contain the brand name.  They know the “channels” in the website—they have precise ideas about what they can’t find.  The many popular searches used for Craigslist may say something about the familiarity and loyalty for their site.

If this logic is correct—more variations of searches for the same term mean people know more about it than other brands or ideas; generally, what does this say about the other winners at the top?  The “P” word is very high, and people have many ideas about what they want to find in that arena.  Google is actually higher than I’d expect.  If someone is searching for variations of Google, they are probably looking for Google properties beyond just Google Search.  However, if they search on Google, it is logical that they want to find out more about Google.  Lottery and weather?  They are certainly staples of life in the US (Next project is to correlate these top searches between countries).

Below is the top TEN thousand.

The game changes, and again, if you are a keyword geek, you should be floored by how popular variations of “Craigslist” are!  There are many variations, including “university,” and I saw this with my research on Twitter for words found in account names.  People love to mention particular “universities”.  There is fierce loyalty behind them.  “Games” and “Login” jump in prominence.  You tell me?  There’s a lot to infer by these word clouds.  Please leave comments about what stands out for you.