And The Top 2015 Google Searches By State Are . . .

By BETH DALBEY (Patch Staff)

What stories grabbed Americans’ attention in 2015?

To find out, the real estate blog Estately put hundreds of search terms through Google Trends to find out what people from each state were searching for, from a landmark Supreme Court ruling and presidential primaries to space exploration and celestial events to celebrity break-ups and deaths.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who followed the landmark Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage that involved two Michigan lesbians who wanted to marry so they could adopt each other’s children:

The most-often searched-for terms in Michigan in 2015 were “what is transgender” and “marriage equality,” according to Estately.com, which assembled a list of the top Google searches for all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The three other states whose marriage equality cases were consolidated in Obergefell v. Hodge — Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee — weren’t similarly occupied. In those states, the top searches were:

Ohio: “Marijuana legalization” (Ohio dealt a crushing electoral defeat to pro-marijuana legalization groups) and Anna Duggar (wife of reality TV personality Josh Duggar,accused of cheating via the Ashley Madison website).

Kentucky: “American Pharoah” (the Triple Crown winner) and “Dusty Rhodes” (the big, boisterous pro wrestler who wore polka-dotted tights and was dubbed the “American Dream” died in 2015);

Tennessee: Fred Thompson (American actor and politician who died in 2015) and National Rifle Association (the group held its annual convention in Nashville in April, made headlines when it said the 80,000 people expected to attend the Second Amendment gun rights group would not be allowed to carry firearms on the convention floor).

The list is full of fun. Here are some more examples:

In Wisconsin, which shares the Upper Peninsula with Michigan, they’re still trying to figure out “What does ‘bae’ mean?” (Everyone in Michigan knows it means “before anyone else,” perhaps because it was one of the top phrases submitted for Lake Superior State University’s 40th Annual List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness).

In Illinois, “super blood moon” was the most searched-for term, and in New Mexico,”Pluto,” the planet once kicked to the curb of the solar system vindicated in theNASA Pluto fly-by, was a top search.

“Super blood moon” and “whip dance” won out in Georgia. If you’re wondering what had Google users whipped into a frenzy about dancing, it may have been the Decatur college student who was either twerking or whipping — not your mama’s rock ‘n’ roll — on the door frame of a moving car when she took a tumble and found viral fame.