Today, Google announced its annual Zeitgeist, a look at 2011 through the collective eyes of the world on the web, offering a unique perspective on the year's major events and hottest trends based on searches conducted in Kenya.

This year's fastest rising searches show growing interest in online entertainment in Kenya, with video sharing site, YouTube, topping the search list, email service and news. Search queries for KRA came in seventh in the fastest rising searches.

Interestingly, in sports-related search queries, aggregate searches for the National Basketball Association (NBA) led the pack, with queries on the English Premier League, the most popular football league in Kenya, coming in from second place. Queries on international entertainers dominated the fastest rising people, with Big Meech topping the list. Steve Jobs, former CEO of Apple, held his own and pipped Nicki Minaj and Rihanna out of the way to come in second. Another interesting personality in the top ten fastest rising people was televangelist Joel Osteen, who was placed sixth before hip hop artiste Lil Wayne.

So what entertainment news do Kenyans search for the most? Soap Operas remain a popular pass time with Kenyans; Soy tu Duena and Teresa Telenovela featuring highly in the top entertainment searches.

These top trends can give insights into the interests and habits of Kenyans, information that can be useful to marketers, communicators, and any other professionals who produce goods and services for the end-user, the consumer. The anonymized trends give you an insight on the people, events and programs people are searching for online.

Anyone can use Insights For Search to come up with their own rankings by visiting http://google.com/insights/search/ and trends http://www.google.com/trends.

Kenya’s Fastest Rising Queries

1.     YouTube

2.     Arsenal

3.     Daily Nation

4.     Facebook

5.     Yahoo

6.     Gmail

7.     KRA

8.     yahoo mail

9.     hotmail

10.  couleur 3

Kenya’s Fastest Rising People

1.     Big Meech

2.     Steve Jobs

3.     John Dahlback

4.     Nicki Minaj

5.     Rihanna

6.     Joel Osteen

7.     Lil Wayne

8.     Ellen G. White

9.     Wayne Rooney

10.  Lewis Nguyai

Top Sports

1.       NBA

2.       Arsenal

3.       Manchester United

4.       Chelsea

5.       English premier league

6.       goal.com

7.       epl news

8.       soccernet

9.       neo cricket live

10.   rugby world cup

Top Google news

1.       Kenya

2.       Somalia

3.       Arsenal

4.       Manchester United

5.       Facebook

6.       Libya

7.       Daily Nation

8.       Chelsea

9.       YouTube

10.   Standard newspaper

Local top search news

1.       Kenya news

2.       BBC

3.       Latest news

4.       Breaking news

5.       Kenya breaking news

6.       Libya

7.       KTN

8.       Gadaffi

9.       Somalia

10.   Nairobi now

Top entertainment

1.       Wake me

2.       Soy tu Duena

3.       Teresa Telenovela

4.       Message riddim

5.       Big brother amplified

6.       Les Paul

7.       Lucero

8.       Miss World 2011

9.         Vybz Kartel songs

10.   Nate Dogg

Health education

1.       HIV

2.       Ovarian cancer

3.       Prostate cancer

4.       Causes of cancer

5.       Cervical cancer

6.       Heart

7.       Breast

8.       Malaria

9.       Diabetes

10.   Sore throat

Beauty and personal care

1.       Hair

2.       How to

3.       Tattoos

4.       Weaves

5.       BMI

6.       Lose

7.       Excercise

8.       Beauty

9.       Weight loss

10.   ITL

Church

1.       Catholic church

2.       Church of God

3.       Baptist church

4.       SDA church

5.       Mavuno church

6.       Church of Christ

7.       Anglican church

8.       Jubilee Christian church

Universities

1.       Nairobi

2.       Kenya

3.       Kenyatta

4.       Moi University

5.       Egerton University

6.       Strathmore University

7.       Facebook

Zeitgeist Explained

Google reveals the internet "Zeitgeist" (German for "the spirit of the times") through an exploration of the billions of search queries we receive each year. In addition to the Year-end Zeitgeist, which highlights the

top trends of 2011, we also have several tools that give insight into global, regional, past and present search trends. Google Zeitgeist tools can never be used to identify individual users because we rely on

anonymized, aggregated counts of how often certain search queries occur over time. These tools are available year-round for you to play with, explore, and learn from this link. which goes live in December 15.