New Yorkers were more interested this year in learning about the latest iPhone than the Boston Marathon bombing, according to the latest list of hot Google searches.
The Web giant is set Tuesday to unveil its annual “Google Zeitgeist,” revealing what online queries showed sustained spikes during 2013.
A sneak peak at the stats shows that the late “Fast & Furious” star Paul Walker — killed Nov. 30 in the fiery crash of a 600-horsepower 2005 Porsche Carrera GT — topped this year’s “trending” searches, both nationwide and across New York City.
But while searches for “Boston Marathon bombing” ranked second among American Internet users as a whole, Big Apple searchers put the iPhone 5S in second place, followed by Cory Monteith, the “Glee” star who died of a drug and alcohol overdose in July.
By comparison, searches for the iPhone 5S — which Apple released in September — ranked just fifth nationwide.
In the sub-category of top-trending films, New Yorkers most frequently searched for the Superman-reboot “Man of Steel,” followed by Brad Pitt’s zombie thriller “World War Z” and “Iron Man 3,” in which Robert Downey Jr. reprised his role as the armored Avenger.
Famed Japanese restaurant Nobu topped Big Apple searches for Zagat-rated restaurants, with the Flatiron District’s NoMad in second place and Mas (farmhouse) in third.
The World Series-winning Boston Red Sox led the list of sports-related searches, which also included queries about September’s Floyd Mayweather vs. Canelo Alvarez boxing match, the Wimbledon tennis tournament and WrestleMania 29.
Surprisingly, the only New York sports team to show up in the top 10 was the Brooklyn Nets, in ninth place.
The top-trending “what is” search was for “twerking,” the sexually provocative dance move that became a household word after Miley Cyrus’ infamous performance during MTV’s Video Music Awards show.
And in the sub-category of “how to,” New Yorkers were most interested in learning to levitate, followed by composting and doing the “Dougie,” a side-to-side dance step popularized by the hip-hip group Cali Swag District.
Google spokeswoman Kate Mason said this year’s “Zeitgeist” — named after the German word that means “the spirit of the times” — was based on an analysis of more than than 1 trillion aggregated and anonymized searches worldwide.
High-volume searches for “everyday stuff” like “weather,” “youtube” and various email login pages were excluded in an effort to provide “a really fascinating insight” into the spectrum of people’s curiosity throughout the year, she said.
But while major news events obviously drove a lot of the queries, the reasons for others remained unclear.
“The beauty of this data is that it shows us interesting things, but it doesn’t tell us why people searched,” Mason said.
“That part is always a little bit of a mystery.”