What did Australia - and the world - Google in 2018?

Google's annual search trend ratings are out for 2018 - and Australia has some explaining to do.

The Duchess of Sussex was popular, with her wedding taking out Google's news category for 2018. Source: AAP

What do the World Cup, the Commonwealth Games and Meghan Markle have in common? Not much, except they're all at the top of Australia’s most googled list for 2018.

Earlier this month, the search engine released its

, giving people the chance to analyse what we, as a nation, care about when we are at the privacy of our computer screen.

The Duchess of Sussex was popular, with her wedding taking out Google's news category for 2018.

AAP

The answer, it seems, is sport, the royals and celebrities.

Ranking at number one and two overall, the World Cup and the Commonwealth Games were both popular searches for Aussies.

The World Cup also the most searched for term globally.

And if it wasn’t already clear from Harry and Meghan’s visit down under, the stats provide further proof that Australia hasn’t done away with the monarchy - Meghan Markle was the third most searched term overall and the Royal Wedding was number one when it came to news events.

The Thai Cave Rescue was the next most googled news event, followed by October’s Wentworth by-election, which was triggered when former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull retired parliament following the #LibSpill (which didn’t, unfortunately, make the cut).

A victorious Kerry Phelps celebrates with supporters after her Wentworth by-election win.

AAP

Celebrities dominated in the ‘global people’ category, with four of the top five - Demi Lovato, Freddie Mercury, Khloe Kardashian and Logan Paul - famous entertainers. Swedish DJ Avicii - who died suddenly in April this year - was the fourth most googled topic overall, and number one in the ‘loss’ category. He was followed by chef and TV personality Anthony Bourdain and rapper Mac Miller.

Unsurprisingly, the searches for all three spiked dramatically around the time of their deaths

When it came to Aussie personalities, celebrities took the back seat and made way for pollies with Barnaby Joyce, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton taking the top three spots, in that order.

Swedish DJ-producer Avicii was one of the most googled people of 2018.

AAP

Meanwhile, social media companies might be a little worried as ‘How to delete Instagram’ and ‘How to delete Facebook’ both made it into the top ten ‘how to …’ searches

But more than anything else, Australians wanted to know ‘How to opt out of my health record’.

Australian began googling how to scrub their details from the My Health digital health database this year, after it was announced by the federal government.

Most baffling might be the ‘why is … ?’ search rankings, with questions such as ‘Why is Australia Day Jan 26’, ‘Why is Anzac Day important’, and ‘Why is Australia Day celebrated’ cracking the top ten alongside ‘Why is Nick Cummins called the Honey Badger’ and ‘Why is my poop green’.

But perhaps strangest thing of all is that the second most Googled recipe in Australia, behind ‘Keto recipes’, was beef stroganoff.

Globally, the top five searches were the World Cup, Avicii, Mac Miller, Stan Lee and Black Panther.

And here are the lists