The Malaysian Airlines incident dominated Australian Hot Searches last month, with four of the top five spots in rising searches relating to the missing plane. Keeping consistent with last year, Hot Searches – March 2013, Australians were searching for daylight savings and Easter as well as AFL and NRL.

On March 8th the search for the missing Malaysian Airlines plane began both offline and online. Australians wanted to know what happened, with search terms like Malaysian Airlines, missing, plane, flight, crash, latest and news all among the top related keywords. And it seemed like the rest of the world wanted to know more too, with the Malaysian Airlines search term being the top rising for March worldwide. As more details emerged, search terms became more specific with the flight number ‘MH370’ and term ‘found’ becoming more prevalent in rising searches.

Searches for daylight savings peaked towards the end of March, with Australians wanted to know when the period would end, in particular, NSW daylight savings. Residents of the Australia Capital Territory, Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales were most concerned with this search term. The clocks will turn back one hour on Sunday April 6th, marking the end of daylight savings, which means an extra hour of sleep for those in NSW, VIC, SA, TAS and ACT.

With the AFL and NRL seasons kicking off on March 5th and 6th respectively, Australians were madly searching the two sports during March. This year, the dream team strategy game ‘SuperCoach’ was a top related search for AFL and NRL, as well as being a top rising search on its own. Other top related and rising searched for the two codes included pairing AFL and/or NRL with the following: 2014, draw, fixture, ladder, scores, results, tipping, tips, footy and teams. Also to note: we’re not a very patient bunch – many related searches included the word ‘live’ in front of them.

Ukraine was a top rising search early in the month, but quickly tapered off. Australians were most concerned with finding the latest news. Top and rising related searches included Russia, Crimea, map, war and crisis. As for who was searching – residents of the ACT searched significantly more than any other Australian region.

Just like last year, Australians searched for Easter. While towards the bottom of the top rising searches, the search term remained consistent over the month of March. Australians were most concerned with asking ‘When is Easter?’ Other related searches included terms such as 2014, dates, school holidays, NSW, WA, as well as ANZAC Day, Orthodox Easter and the Royal Easter Show in Sydney.

Want to add some fizz to your Search Marketing activity in 2014?

Get in touch to see how Sodafizz can help you reach your online marketing goals.