Digital Economy

Google Trends 2025: what Italians searched for, between geopolitics and recipes

Sanremo dominates, geopolitics worries, and everyone wants to know how the chatter is done. The portrait of an Italy between music, cuisine and big questions

by Marco Trabucchi

4 December 2025

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Cogito ergo sum? These days it is better to 'search, therefore I am'. Google searches continue to be the mirror that reveals to us what our manias, obsessions, habits and fears are. And nothing beats Google's annual ranking to find out how the year that is about to end went. "A Year of Searches" meticulously immortalises the peaks of curiosity of Italians (not the most frequent searches in absolute terms, but those with the greatest increase), which give us an unexpected portrait: less frivolous than one might think, and decidedly more curious and colourful. There are twelve sections in the ranking: Why, Adii, TV series, Movies, Singers, Recipe, How to dress, What it means, Song lyrics, How to do it and How to cook. The whole range of our obsessions, curiosities, foibles and paranoia.

Why: when curiosity reigns

Typing 'why' into Google is like knocking on the door of our collective consciousness. The most searched question of the year is "Why did Israel attack Iran?". Geopolitics 'for dummies' followed by variations on the Trump-Iran, Israel-Gaza theme. But soon after the big international issues, come decidedly more local curiosities: "Why Leo XIV?" (the pope), "Why doesn't Olly go to Eurovision?" (the drama), "Why was Cecilia Sala arrested?" and even "Why does The Couple close?" - proving that local and global coexist in the same mental timeline of Italians.

We want to know everything

The section "What does it mean?" is a museum of our cultural uncertainties. Paraphilia reigns supreme, followed by "Career Separation" (the year's markedly political-judicial theme), through to gems such as "What does bed rotting mean?", the Gen Z trend of spending entire days in bed, which evidently has also intrigued boomers. This is followed by ACAB, Augustinian, Cubicularian: a mix of antagonistic acronyms, ecclesiastical philosophy and Latinorum that says a lot about the fragmentation of contemporary cultural references.

How is it done?

The chapter on our 'existential tutorials' is decidedly colourful. A list that moves fluently from health & fitness to cooking, from technology to health, in a mix that perfectly photographs our everyday life between lightness and necessity. In 2025 we asked for everything: porridge, tanatopraxis, abdominal vacuum, screenshots on the PC, action figures, iced coffee, dry brushing, casatiello, mussel soup and colonoscopy.

The Festival (which never ends)

Sanremo is a national obsession, you know. But seeing Lucio Corsi and Olly at the top of the list of the most sought-after personalities - and then again among the singers - confirms that the Festival continues to be the aargument that reigns everywhere, from the bar to the workplace, the totem of Italian curiosity. Corsi, a Tuscan singer-songwriter with surreal poetics, and Olly, a pop phenomenon from TikTok, represent the two souls of contemporary Italian music: the auteur and the mainstream. Alongside them, Marcella Bella (evidently the subject of a San Remo rediscovery), Serena Brancale and a Brunori Sas who never goes out of fashion.

People: sport dominates

Lorenzo Musetti in third place among the personalities and Jasmine Paolini in fifth signal a 2025 to be framed for Italian tennis. Two young talents who have evidently conquered the sports headlines and the collective imagination, transforming tennis into a decidedly pop phenomenon. Not bad for a sport that until recently seemed the preserve of a few fans.

And then there is Bianca Balti, in fourth place: model, style icon, protagonist of a battle against cancer that has moved Italy. Her presence in the ranking says a lot about how Google searches are now also a thermometer of collective empathy. There is also the journalist Cecilia Sala among the personalities, a sign that the tragedy of her detention in Iran has consecrated her in the collective imagination.

TV series: the new contemporary obsession

Watching a certain TV series rather than another is an identity trait. If we watch The Monster of Florence, maybe we are also interested in Terrace Sentiment, and so on. And when a TV series becomes a trend we have to know more about it, because we don't want to be left behind.

Thus topping the chart is Monster: The Story of Ed Gein followed by the unfailing Squid Game. The phenomenon Adolescence and M - The Child of the Century, the Mussolini biopic that divided (and thrilled) Italy, could not be missed.

The Holiday Kitchen (and Squid Game)

The ranking of recipes is a lesson in culinary anthropology. In first place is the Neapolitan casatiello, followed by the Easter colomba: Italians are looking for tradition, the kind that has been handed down but needs to be verified on Google because 'the way grandma used to make it' is no longer enough.

But the real coup is Squid Game's biscuits in sixth place. The Korean series managed to do what decades of globalisation had failed to achieve: convince Italians to search for recipes other than pasta and pizza. Together with Crumbl cookies (a social media phenomenon), they represent the pop side of culinary research. There are also eggs a la Jova Gastronomic Mystery of the Year, in third place.