YouTube Searches Now on Google Trends

Here's a trivia question: Based on YouTube searches, what was the top trending animal on YouTube this month in the United States? It's not what you might think...



Yes, goats. (If you missed this one and want to know more about how exactly screaming goats became so popular this month, here's one video that discusses the whole phenomenon.)

Google Trends enables you to take popular search queries and explore traffic patterns over time and geography. Now we've added YouTube search data going back to 2008, making it another great tool to look at video trends. Visit Google Trends and enter any search you'd like and then, on the left, choose "limit to" for YouTube. You can slice by region or category as well.

Search query interest can often provide a more detailed picture into the life of a trend or topic. For example: for those of you wondering whether the "Harlem Shake" is over... it's not.



You can also see interesting seasonal patterns. For example, cooking searches for "turkey" in the US see dramatic spikes every November as people scramble to remember exactly how to prep that big meal before the relatives arrive.



And Rebecca Black searches spike once each week. Guess which day...



Head over to Google Trends and see what other interesting YouTube searches you can find.

The Harlem Shake Has Exploded (Updated)

Depending on your frame of reference, the "Harlem Shake" is best known as dance move from the 1980s, a dance track by Baauer, or the biggest web video trend of the month. If you need to get caught up to speed, here's a playlist of some of the most-popular iterations of it from the past few days.



The meme first started gaining traction last week and is attributed to a silly video from a vlogger named "Filthy Frank." Though it was another user named SunnyCoastSkate who then established the form we've become familiar with: the jump cut, the helmet, etc.

From there, the spin-offs spread very quickly. As of the 11th, around 12,000 "Harlem Shake" videos had been posted since the start of the month and they'd already been watched upwards of 44 million times. As you can see in the chart below, over 4,000 of these videos are being uploaded per day and that number is still likely on the rise.



One of the unique directions the trend took rather early was spawned by the staff of Maker Studios, who created what's currently the currently most-viewed version from their office. While it could have just remained a college-kid fad, Maker's version helped signal that the trend was something any organization or office could be a part of, with other companies joining them like...

College Humor	The Chive
Break	Buzzfeed

Musicians Matt and Kim produced a pretty epic one that's been circulated widely on social media. It's been performed by the young... and the old.

Some of the many subgroups we've seen are swim teams and U.S. service academies, and there are plenty more on the way, we're sure.

Update (2/15): It turns out plenty more were on the way. As of Valentine's day the number of "Harlem Shake" videos has increased to around 40,000 -- based on video title -- and those videos now have 175 million views. Here's an update to the above chart:

Best of 2012: Top Lists of Trending and Popular Videos

As we officially start a new year of trending videos in 2013, let's take a look back at the most-popular and top trending videos across a wide variety of interesting YouTube video categories that helped make 2012 the year that it was!

(Click through to view playlists)

Top 10 Trending Science Videos of 2012	Top Trending Sports Videos of 2012	Top 10 How-to and DIY Videos of 2012
Top 10 Eye-Popping Videos of 2012	Top 10 Cover Videos of 2012	Top 10 Awe-Inspiring Videos of 2012
Top Trending Beauty Videos of 2012	Top Trending Comedy Videos of 2012	Top 10 Pet Videos of 2012
Top 10 Political Videos of 2012	Top 10 Gaming Culture Videos of 2012	Top 10 Holiday Videos of 2012

And, in case you missed it, here's our recap of the top overall trending videos of the year.

Top 10 Holiday Videos of 2012

Happy Holidays from YouTube Trends!

For a third year, we again look back at the top trending videos of the holiday season. This year, Epic Rap Battles -- who also produced one of 2012's overall top trending videos -- took the top spot as of Christmas Eve with it's Snoop Lion collaboration, "Moses vs Santa Claus".

You can see the full top 10 in the list below or via this playlist.

While it didn't break the top 10, the top Hanukkah video of the year was this Rube Goldberg Machine from the Israel Institute of Technology.

For more, you can check out the top 10 lists from 2011 and 2010.

Gangnam Style Crosses One Billion View Mark

This post originally appeared on the Official YouTube Blog

A million views? You know what's cool? A billion views.

Today, a 34-year-old K-Pop artist made online video history when his viral video, Gangnam Style, smashed all our records and became the first video ever to reach one billion views. Yup, that’s right one BILLION views!



PSY's success is a great testament to the universal appeal of catchy music-- and er, great equine dance moves. In the past, music distribution was mostly regional. It was more difficult to learn about great artists from around the world. But with a global platform at their fingertips, people are now discovering and sharing amazing music from all over the planet, by artists like Brazilian Michel Teló and Belgian-Australian Gotye.

One billion views is an incredible number, but the PSY-nomenon goes beyond that. Check out these stats:

• PSY was already big in Korea, but in 2012, he became a global celeb as Gangnam Style quickly spread from Seoul and the pacific to North America, South America, and Europe. It’s been seen at least 1 million times in close to 75 countries, making it one of the most global music sensations ever!
• From a one-thousand person flash mob in Jakarta to cover videos from Ai Weiwei and Mitt Romney, hundreds of thousands of parodies have been uploaded to YouTube, some of which have tens of millions of views. In fact, fan tributes to Gangnam Style are now being viewed 20 million times every single day.
• PSY's own remix with Hyuna has 200 million views alone.
• "Gangnam Style" was YouTube's top rising search of 2012 and on October 6th, we saw more than five million searches for “gangnam style” in a single day. Check out this video demonstrating some of our most popular YouTube searches this year.
• For those interested in the business side: a number of assessments and projections have been posted claiming “Gangnam Style” has generated over $8.1 million in advertising deals, hit more than 2.9 million in song downloads since July, and achieved other incredible feats!
• Since late last month, people have clicked to buy the track on iTunes over 600,000 times helping make PSY the first Korean artist ever to rank #1 on the U.S. iTunes chart and #1 in over 30 more countries.

Perhaps what’s most impressive about this feat is that it took just over five months to happen. To give this milestone some context, here’s a chart of Gangnam Style’s rise to popularity versus Justin Bieber’s “Baby,” the video that previously held the most-watched video title:



Congratulations to PSY, the flash mobbers, K-Pop fans and people who love fun across the globe. Considering the Gangnam Style dance was the number one dance-related search on YouTube this year, you better make sure you brush up on your moves before New Year's Eve.

The kind of amazing creativity and unique connection between people all over the world that resulted in this one billion views is only possible with an incredible community of people we're so lucky to have on YouTube. And we can't wait to see what you'll come up with next!