“Jesus loves you” was the most searched term on Google News in the UK and Ireland in 2010, according to Google Insights for Search.
In Ireland the term was 20 times more popular than “ireland“, the next highest ranking term. “Jesus loves you” even outranked search terms such as “gerry ryan“, “weather” and “haiti“. In the UK it was 10 times more popular than the second search term “news“.
The term was one of the most popular on the News search engine from February to mid-june in Ireland and the UK . Looking specifically at this date range more searches were conducted for “jesus loves you” than for terms related to the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, which caused travel chaos from April to May across Ireland, the UK and Northern Europe and for terms relating to the death of RTÉ broadcaster Gerry Ryan, who died suddenly on April 30th.
There is no indication what prompted the increase in searches although a similar increase was seen on Twitter for the same term.
The media dominated the other prominent news search terms during 2010. RTE, BBC, cheryl cole, google, Facebook, Gerry Ryan and YouTube are included on the list to top ten searches. With two unseasonably cold spells in January and December 2010 and the Eyjafjallajökull eruption in April the term weather was also a popular search term in the UK and Ireland
