SINGAPORE: Singaporeans are preoccupied by the economic downturn, and this is showing up even in searches on Google Singapore.

The search engine’s annual Zeitgeist, which highlights the year’s top search trends, found an almost 120-per-cent jump this year in the number of searches for terms like “cheap”, “sale” and “spree”.

Terms such as “recession” increased by a whopping 270 per cent, and “financial crisis” spiked by 140 per cent when the global markets began to fall.

There were also other interesting results. Hong Kong scandal-embroiled celebrity Edison Chen took the top spot in the fastest rising search this year, while Newton Hawker Centre was dethroned by Maxwell Hawker Centre on the hawker centre search list.

Channel News Asia