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Bing’s 2014 year-end rankings put Kim Kardashian first among searched people and the iPhone 6 first among devices. But Jennifer Lawrence, the Fappening and Sony’s PS4 were missing from the respective top tens highlighted by BetaNews. Their absence means they did not make those published lists—not that people never searched for them.
What Bing’s 2014 rankings covered
Microsoft published its year-end roundup on December 1, 2014, describing it as a look back at billions of searches conducted on Bing during the year. The official post grouped results into categories including people, news, devices, apps and entertainment. Microsoft’s description is a characterization of its own dataset, not an independently validated measure of public opinion. Read Bing’s year-end post.
BetaNews published its account the same day, reproducing several top-ten lists and pointing to subjects it found conspicuously absent. Its omissions are observations about the displayed rankings, not evidence that Bing received no searches for those subjects. Read the BetaNews report.
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People
- Kim Kardashian
- Beyoncé
- Miley Cyrus
- Katy Perry
- Justin Bieber
- Joan Rivers
- Jennifer Lopez
- Kendall Jenner
- Kaley Cuoco
- Robin Williams
News stories
- World Cup
- Super Bowl
- Missing Malaysia Airlines jet
- Winter Olympics
- Rise of ISIS
- Ray Rice controversy
- Shooting in Ferguson
- Ebola outbreak
- Brittany Maynard’s Death with Dignity
- Ukraine (Crimea)-Russia conflict
Devices
- iPhone 6
- Xbox One
- Fitbit
- iPad
- Surface Pro 3
- Kindle Fire
- Windows Phone
- Galaxy S4
- Chromecast
- Google Glass
Apps and movies
The app ranking ran Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Skype, Vine, Snapchat, Candy Crush Saga, WhatsApp, Angry Birds and Farmville, in that order. Bing’s most searched movie was Frozen.
#1 Best Overall
What the “curious omissions” mean
BetaNews noted that Jennifer Lawrence was not among Bing’s ten listed people, the Fappening did not appear in the news top ten, and Sony’s PS4 was absent from the device list. These are omissions from specific published top tens. The rankings do not show whether those subjects appeared lower down, how often they were searched, or why they did not place.
A top-ten list is a narrow slice of activity: it ranks searches within categories selected and reported by one search engine. It is not a poll of the public, a complete catalogue of popular subjects, or a measure of cultural importance. Microsoft’s published material does not establish enough methodological detail—such as category thresholds, normalization, handling of repeated searches, or precise geographic scope for each list—to support broader conclusions.
Quick Recap
Best Value
Rank #2
- Google search engine.
How to read the rankings
- They describe Bing activity. The lists concern searches on Bing during 2014, as Microsoft reported them.
- They show rank, not search counts. Apart from Microsoft’s general reference to “billions” of searches, the published summary does not provide a precise total or category-level volumes.
- They do not explain causes. The placements alone cannot tell why one person, event or device ranked above another.
- They are historical. The roundup was published on December 1, 2014, before that year had ended.
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