Tennis star Simona Halep, the baccalaureate exam, the tragedy at the Colectiv club, and ISIS were among the hottest topics this year in Romania, according to Google’s ranking of the most popular searches made by Romanians in 2015.

“Pixwords answers” tops the ranking of the most popular searches made by Romanians on Google, followed by “2015 baccalaureate results”, Turkish TV series “Puterea destinului” (Sila), “dog breeds”, “Fast and furious 7”, “Simona Halep”, “Eurovision 2015”, “Elena Udrea”, “2015 Orthodox calendar”, and “Gabriel Cotabita”.

Tennis player Simona Halep, former tourism minister Elena Udrea and singer Gabriel Cotabita were the most popular people in Romania this year, according to Google searches. The Romanians also searched information about late politician Corneliu Vadim Tudor, TV stars Oana Zavoranu, Mihaela Radulescu, and Marioara Zavoranu, Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos, singer Robbie Williams, and theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking.

The baccalaureate tops the ranking of the most searched events this year, followed by the teachers’ contest, Colectiv, Charlie Hebdo, and Izabela’s Birthday (a girl’s birthday which turned into a national event after she invited a large number of people on Facebook by mistake).

The most popular “What is…” searches feature terms such as ISIS, diaspora, Ebola, and autism.

The Romanians seem to have been really interested in tennis this year, as the top five most popular sports events were the Australian Open, the US Open, Wimbledon, Indian Wells, and Roland Garros.

In the concerts category, the most popular searches were related to Untold Festival, Robbie Williams’ concert, Electric Castle 2015 music festival, Folk You 2015 music festival, Parov Stelar, Andre Rieu concert 2015, George Enescu Festival 2015, Joe Satriani, Airfield Festival, and Violetta concert.

The most searched movies were Fast and Furious 7, Fifty Shades of Grey, Taken 3, Jurassic World, Insurgent, Minions, American Sniper, Focus, Mad Max, and Birdman.

Most popular searches on Google in Romania in 2014

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com