Google’s annual Year in Search has landed with a twist in 2025: the man who often defined the public’s attention in prior years, Donald Trump, did not top the ranking this time. The Daily Beast’s Leigh Kimmins reports that Trump was nowhere in the top trending lists globally or in the United States. Instead, the year’s list highlights a mixed cast of activists, entertainers, athletes and political figures, with Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary, rising to eighth in the national ranking. The shift marks a notable movement in the attention economy: what spikes in a 12-month window matters more for trending narratives than raw popularity, and it suggests a broader audience turning toward a broader set of topics and personalities.
The Daily Beast article adds color to the rankings, noting that the 2025 list includes figures like Zohran Mamdani (the New York mayor-elect), alleged killer Tyler Robinson, rapper d4vd, Erika (Kirk’s widow), Pope Leo XIV, football star Shedeur Sanders, adult entertainer Bonnie Blue, tech CEO Andy Byron, and Jimmy Kimmel, who is often a critic of Trump on late-night television. Kagged with a political edge, the lineup underscores that the spikes come from diverse domains rather than one political megaphone. The piece also notes that Leavitt’s ascent was singled out as a striking breakout—an indicator of how her profile within the administration captured attention even as Trump’s headline-pace did not.
Meanwhile, a Guardian take on Trump health rumors frames the online atmosphere in which speculation can overwhelm reality. David Smith’s analysis in The Guardian notes how social media chatter, TikTok memes, and rapid-fire news cycles can create a “conspiracy economy” around health and aging in public life. The Guardian piece emphasizes that online rumors about whether Trump is “dead” reveal much about how misinformation travels, what audiences crave, and how attention is commodified in the digital age.
The Guardian’s reporting foregrounds expert voices who describe how misinformation circulates faster than official medical disclosures. Larry Jacobs of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance, quoted in The Guardian piece, cautions that even intelligent observers can be misled by online content that spreads like wildfire. Drexel Heard, a Democratic strategist, adds a cautionary note about the gendered and age-related scrutiny of public figures, arguing that Trump’s health narrative is often measured differently than that of rivals like Joe Biden.
The year’s narrative around Trump also includes a few practical details: The Guardian notes Trump’s health rumors persisted amid questions about his age, with the White House acknowledging chronic venous insufficiency as a medical condition and attributing bruising to routine activity and aspirin use. The Daily Beast’s version of the story adds context about how this health chatter intersects with a broader media ecosystem that amplifies sensational content, from memes to fundraising appeals.
Beyond the health rumors, the 2025 Google Year in Search also highlights concrete moments in politics and culture that fed the year’s spikes, such as Mamdani’s ascension to mayoral leadership in Trump’s hometown, and Kimmel’s continued late-night barbs that may have outpaced Trump in public discourse. The search data, the piece notes, is not a measure of who is most searched overall but who showed the greatest year-over-year growth, underscoring how the public’s curiosity can shift toward a new constellation of figures and stories across politics, entertainment and culture.
Taken together, the year’s rankings illustrate a shift in what captures public imagination. The absence of Trump from the top of Google’s Year in Search 2025 is a reflection of changing interests, while the rise of Leavitt and other diverse figures signals a broader, more plural attention economy. It also underscores how misinformation and rumors about health or mortality can spread rapidly online, often outpacing official information lines, and how such dynamics shape public perception even when facts are readily available.
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