The Hot Searches for November 2014 were quite different to those of 2013. While last year’s Hot Searches all related to entertainment, the single consistent topic this year was the Melbourne Cup. The remainder of the Hot Searches spanned several topics, and included the tragic death of Phillip Hughes, the G-20 Summit, new release movie Interstellar and a Kim Kardashian’s attempt to break the internet.

The top rising search for November 2014 was for cricketer Phillip Hughes. During a Sheffield Shield match at the Sydney Cricket Ground, Hughes became unconscious after he was hit in the neck by cricket ball. The accident led to Hughes being rushed to hospital on November 25. Phil Hughes never regained consciousness from the injury and passed away on November 27. The accident was just one of 100 cases ever reported, and the first to have involved a cricket ball. Close friends such as Michael Clarke have spoken out in support of the young and talented batsman.

Searches for new release movie Interstellar were consistent throughout the month, with peaks every Saturday. Unlike previous movie titles that have made it into the Hot Searches list, the majority of the related searches included IMAX, Hoyts and Event Cinemas, proving that we do occasionally pay for movie tickets. However, a few of us still wanted to watch more than the Interstellar trailer online. Australians were tossing up between Interstellar and Fury, which was also a related search term.

As usual, the race that stops a nation made it into our Hot Searches this November, coming in third place instead of first. Searches for the 2014 Melbourne Cup peaked race day (November 4), with Australians eager to check the odds and research tips before placing bets at the TAB. Once we figured out what time the race was, we were rather impatient to find out how our bets fared, with related searches for live Melbourne Cup results and winners featuring prominently. The only horse name to make the rising related searches was Admire Rakti, one of two racehorses that died after the race. Interestingly, the Melbourne/Victoria region was the least interested in the nation, when it came to search.

On November 13, Kim Kardashian supposedly broke the internet (with her butt). After posing nude for the cover of Paper Magazine, photos of Kardashian went viral. Naked pictures from the photo-shoot were on our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter feeds, as well as almost every news site and blog to ever exist. But in true Kardashian style, results peaked on November 13, and plateaued into nothing a few days later.

The 2014 G20 Australia Summit was held in Brisbane on November 15 and 16. Australians, in particular residents of Brisbane, were most interested in finding out more about G20 road closures, whether or not they’d get a public holiday out of it and what impact the event would have on the airport. We did however have some interest in G20 news, with Obama and Putin on the top of our rising searches list (and no mention of Tony Abbott). Not surprisingly, Qld was the most interested state, with the ACT coming in second. Search results built up until their peak on the November 15, but by November 18 we’d lost interest.