Bing reveals its top tech searches of the year

The iPhone 5 and Facebook have topped Microsoft’s search engine Bing’s technology and news searches of the year lists, with the iPhone 5 claiming the top spot on the most-searched for consumer electronics list and most-searched for new stories list, while Facebook is first on the most-searched for top social networks list.

The iPhone 5 smartphone’s popularity as a search term can be attributed to its release in September this year. Another Apple product, the iPad, comes in at No 2 on Bing’s most-searched for consumer electronics list, as a fourth-generation version of the tablet computer and a mini version were also released recently.

Facebook has notched up quite a notable year. The company revealed it now encompasses 800m users and it held its much-buzzed about IPO in May – likely one of the biggest IPOs in technology yet – only for the company’s stock to lose less than half its IPO value in three months.

A series of problems dogged Facebook after the IPO, starting with a computer malfunction at NASDAQ that saw tens of millions of dollars in trades wrongly placed, and news of Facebook executives accused of alerting industry insiders to Facebook’s earnings before they were public.

Bing’s search results, based on the aggregation of billions of search queries conducted on the search engine this year, also reveals that consumers are seeking ways to access free music. In 2012, three of the top five app searches were for music players (Pandora, I Heart Radio, Spotify).

Bing 2012: tech in most-searched for results