Fiona Viotti (nearly) came out tops in the Google search stakes this week

“Loadshedding” garnered more than 200,000 Google searches on Wednesday as Eskom instituted level-two electricity power cuts for the first time in more than six months, according to a statement by the company that owns the popular search engine.

South Africans also generated more than 50,000 search queries for “Fiona Viotti” on Sunday, an additional 50,000 search queries for “Bishops teacher” on Monday, and 20,000 search queries for “Fiona Viotti Videos” on Thursday.

Viotti, who generated more than 120,000 combined Google searches this week, was thrust into the spotlight on Sunday when news allegations of serious misconduct were brought against the 30-year-old for an alleged sexual relationship with an 18-year-old matric pupil at Bishops Diocesan College in Rondebosch. By Thursday this week, explicit pictures and videos allegedly featuring the teacher circulated on social media and were uploaded on to a popular adult entertainment website, PornHub.

The videos have since been removed. One video, featuring a nude woman purporting to be Viotti on a bed, had been viewed more than 20,000 times by Thursday afternoon.

Her attorney, William Booth, took steps to have the video removed from the site. The site has systems in place to allow victims of revenge porn to have their content removed from the site. Booth had warned that sharing the video content was illegal without Viotti’s consent.

In other top trending searches on Google this week, more than 20,000 search queries were generated for “MultiChoice” on Tuesday as a fire broke out at the Randburg offices of the satellite TV company, forcing staff to evacuate.

Another 20,000 search queries were generated on Saturday for “Eliud Kipchoge”, the Kenyan athlete who became the first person to ever complete a marathon in under two hours.

Search trends information is gleaned from data collated by Google based on what South Africans have been searching for and asking Google.

Google processes more than 40,000 search queries every second. This translates to more than a billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year, worldwide.

Live Google search trends data is available here.

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