Most popular Google searches by Malaysians from A to Z (Part 2)

Hello and welcome back to CILISOS’ A to Z of Google Malaysia, Part 2, where we will dig up the deepest, darkest Internet secrets of Malaysians from N to Z. In Part 1,  we discovered that Malaysians’ search patterns ofttimes fall into these categories: budget airlines, online banking and shopping sites, news portals, and email service. But bless us all, turns out N to Z has even more eyebrow-raising stories to tell about our favourite searches.

One more time, in case you missed Part 1. Let’s get googling…

N for Naruto

That’s 1, 2, 3 times the Naruto! *eyebrows goin’ up*

Seems that yellow-haired manga ninja is popular among Malaysians. So popular, that Malaysia makes up Manga Here’s 5th highest number of visitors IN THE WORLD. Hold on to your hats. Let’s see what other info we can find on the Internet…

• MangaPark – Malaysia has the 5th highest number of visitors worldwide.
• mangafox.me – Malaysia has the 4th highest number of visitors worldwide.

*drum roll*

• Mangareader.net – Malaysia has the HIGHEST number of visitors worldwide! We are literally this site’s biggest fans. For a dose of manga, this would be, like, the equivalent of the Hallowed Halls Hangout Spot of the Manga Brethren People Ninjas…

Nearby, Indonesia and Singapore are equally as infatuated with Naruto as we are, as their Google searches have revealed.

Fans love Naruto (if they all have the same reasons) because they find him a flawed, relatable, and human character, as one described:

“Naruto is kind to a fault. He is persevering to a fault. He is loyal to a fault. But we LOVE that about him.” – Modest Truth, HubPages

OMG, he’s Cinderella!

O for Oh Bulan

At first we asked ourselves, isn’t that the name of a song? So we tried typing it in full…

Oh bukan!

Then we YouTube-d the song…

…which pretty much convinced us it’s the gossip portal people are clicking on. So it’s true. Malaysians just can’t get enough of juicy celebrity gossip. But compared to BeautifulNara (in Part 1, B), Oh Bulan is placed far, far away at 319 on Alexa rankings.

Next, apa Oppo? The China smartphone brand is relatively fresh off the boat, debuting its N1 model in February 2014. And reviews are lookin’ good. The N1, R1 and Find 7 were voted 4 stars each on Mobile88. On GSMArena, the reviews (based on design, features and performance) averaged a score of 7.7 for the N1, 5.4 for the R1, and 8.0 for the Find 7. Oppo will soon release its N3 model in October. Good la, more phones in the market, more competition *cough, Samsung and Apple*.

 

ICQ is dead. Long live Omegle! Omega eggs? Nope, Omegle, a no-need-to-register, free, chat-with-strangers service. You can choose between just chatting or web-cam-ing with folks from Malaysia or around the world. However on Alexa, the site is nowhere to be found among the top 500. When we tried it out, we chatted with some Helena woman from the US.

P for Public Bank

Public Bank is the third most popular bank in Malaysia and since we do most of our banking online for the convenience, there you go. Easy peasy. Beats having to take a number and waiting during the lunch hour rush at the bank. Bleurghhh! The bank’s website is the 58th most visited page in Malaysia.

Not to be pwned by the financial sector, the government too has brought all its operations online – PTPTN being one of them. Chairman Datuk Shamsul Anuar, said that they required more than RM5 billion to accommodate 200,000 students every year. But the sad part is, students are not paying their loans back. Since the loan was introduced in 1997, it had approved loans totalling RM56.29 billion for 2.46 million students. Pity, pity them!

Q for QVOD

Those who do NOT read Chinese, please step to the left. The rest of you, follow us. When we clicked on the QVOD option on Google, it brought us straight to this…

Sorry. Us bananas couldn’t make anything out of it either, so we explain in the Englands lah. Basically, Quick Video On Demand is a video player software from China. Its said to be much, much faster than torrent sites. So what’s the catch? Virus? Trojan? Spyware? Dunno. No one has really trashed it so far. Some users appear to like it, but others have cautioned that it may not be 100% safe. Other letters in our Google search didn’t suggest old skool torrent sites like Pirate Bay or Demonoid, proving that QVOD has a loyal following among the Malaysian video ‘pirates’ of today.

R for RHB Bank

Surely you don’t want us to blab s’more about how Malaysians prefer to do online banking for the convenience. Oops, repeated ourselves! But just so you know, RHB Bank’s page is the 118th most visited site.

If all this banking stuff is making you illogically hungry, how about a snack? Sounding like something you’d order off Old Town’s menu, Rotikaya on Google Malaysia is, in fact, not the actual snack. It’s not even a food blog. We’ve been foodwinked! Rotikaya is yet another celebrity gossip site, ranked no. 213. What sets it apart from BeautifulNara and Oh Bulan is that this site has the scoop on not just Malaysian celebs, but Indonesian and Hollywood stars as well.

Celebrities from one particular country is getting a lot of idolising from Malaysians and that’s Korea (NOT the Kim Jong-un side, duh!). However, Running Man is not only a running suggestion because of its immense popularity. The variety show is actually coming to Malaysia. One HD, the TV network running the event, has confirmed this. Showing no signs of running out of steam, fans are expected to really run for the tickets. So, grab yours before they run out! OK, the puns are running away with themselves. And now we’re running low. Stop! Just STOP!!!!!!

S for SAPS (?)

So many guesses, none were correct… it wasn’t tree sap, it wasn’t poor sap (like Bad Luck Brian). Wasn’t even sap sap sui.

SAPS (yes, in caps) is short for Sistem Analisis Peperiksaan Sekolah. Sowie lor, CILISOS gang dunnave have kids yet. Parents and guardians of schoolchildren can check trial results for UPSR, PMR and SPM exams on the site. Bummer, there goes the trusty off-the-lights-and-sign-my-report-card trick. Alamak, did we say that out loud? Considering there are 5,163,316 children enrolled in primary and secondary schools this year, there would be plenty of eager parents clicking on SAPS. And we know how Malaysian parents are very involved in the academic performance of their kids.

While we’re on a streak of wrong guesses – spa apparently doesn’t indicate that Malaysians are indulging in this pampering lifestyle. SPA (yes, again in caps) stands for Suruhanjaya Perkhidmatan Awam Malaysia (shouldn’t it be SPAM, then?). The site couldn’t be more obvious if it tried – nearly all its links invite the visitor to apply for job applications within the civil sector. Thing is, Malaysia the highest civil servants to population ratio in the Asia Pacific at 4.68%. Thailand has a ratio of 2.06%, Indonesia, 1.79%, and Singapore, 1.5%, only compared to us.

T for Translate (as in Google Translate)

Translate pops up on the search engine as did Google Translate in the letter G. Throwback translate here.

In other geographical bits of the world, Twitter had wrested Facebook’s crown in popularity, then was itself overtaken by Instagram on smartphones, yet Facebook is still the Biggest Kahuna in Malaysia. Twitter lags behind at 14th place, while Instagram can barely keep up at 26th (Alexa rankings).

World: Instagram > Twitter > Facebook
Malaysia: Facebook > Twitter > Instagram > Oh Bulan (educated guess)

Twitter won’t directly lead you to fuzzy cat videos, but Tubidy, a mobile video search engine, will. Tubidy’s servers do the technical stuff that we dare not attempt to wrap our heads around, so that you can download the hilarious cat video your colleague was telling you about, into your mobile phone.

U for Utusan Malaysia

A lot happened in 1997. The PTPTN loan was introduced, there was the Asian economic crisis, then Utusan became the first online mainstream newspaper – although back in those MS-DOS days, who among the average public would have had access to it? As the Internet picked up, Utusan’s site became no. 48, making it the third most popular BM language news portal, after Sinar Harian and Harian Metro.

– – –

Upu? Apa? Oppo’s cousin? Nola, UPU is short for Unit Pusat Universiti. It manages student registration into public universities. Which means this is the institution that holds – YOUR FUTURE!!! *Apollo theme song* In 1995, it was given a new name: Bahagian Pengurusan Kemasukan Pelajar IPT (BPKP IPT). And it was renamed again in 2005: Bahagian Pengurusan Kemasukan Pelajar (BPKP). Anybody wanna guess what they’ll change it to in 2015?

Let’s do a mini Mat-Matik here…

According to The Malaysian Insider, the Education Department offered places for 37,467 students – that number is 55.5% of those who applied for the 2014-2015 term. Therefore, 67,508 students applied in total. Could that be your UPU traffic?

V for video downloader

All V searches………. yeah, ALL V searches were video-based. Thankfully.

Vuclip‘s first entry appears to be a local website with this address: m.vuclip.com. With minimalist interface, it had a mish-mash of BM + English links like Hollywood, muzik, entertainment, senarai klip saya, kids special ku cari, etc. Then among the usual video categories like Top Videos, Pop Artists, and Humour, there’s Mr. Bean – the cartoon. Like they couldn’t dump Mr. Bean into the humour category or, or, or, maybe kids special, noooooo, they had to give it a space of its own.

We know why Vimeo is a top search on Google. Teacher, teacher, we know! *raises hand like classroom dork* Because:

Despite being a no-ads video heaven, Vimeo is way down at 187 on Alexa’s rankings while YouTube dominates at 4. But the rationale is probably because YouTube has a wider selection of videos. Because more people are uploading there anyway. All 4 suggestions for V show us that Malaysians love to watch videos online. Bye, bye Ah-Beng DVD sellers.

W for World Cup 2014

We were just shooting a Walther PPK in the dark and hoping it would hit the target when we did an Alexa search for WhatsApp‘s first entry on Google – which is iwhatsappforpc.com. Manatau, Malaysia has the third highest percentage (3.9%) of visitors around the globe to this site. *Blows imaginary smoking barrel*

On Alexa’s rankings though, the site is not among the top 500. Wikipedia on the other hand, is some kind of hero at no. 9. Wikipedia may be user-generated content, but when it says:

“The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model for the early development of the universe.” – Big Bang, Wikipedia

How could you NOT buy it? At any rate, Wikipedia is awesome because if anything, it’ll at least give you the basic idea of a subject before you expand your research elsewhere. Or it will at least tickle the bookworm fancy of those who love to read funny and bizarre stuff.

If we had to nominate one website as the creepy, inbred relative of Wikipedia, it has to be Uncyclopedia. Please just read this article and you’ll understand be more confused know why we can only describe it as inbred. Bah, what the heck – read ’em all *sanity – stomps on it*.

X for Xiaomi

Why are we not surprised that X searches would yield Xiaomi and not the X-Men?

Xiaomi is picking up really fast in smartphone race. One of the reasons people are digging it is affordability. But its features are much appreciated as well. Most of the Xiaomi models received 4-stars on Mobile88, except for the Redmi Note 4G, which received full 5-stars. On GSMArena, the Mi3 model raked up a flattering average of 8.2 (votes based on design, features and performance). Pitted against the Samsung Galaxy S5, the Mi3 was voted the winner on Oizoioi.

Y for YouTube

C’mon YouTube is a given. Remember, YouTube was 4th on Alexa rankings? Well if you can guess what no. 5 is, we’ll give you a cookie. Clue: It’s right there in our screen cap of Google Malaysia’s Y suggestions, below YouTube. Yahoo is indeed the 5th most visited site. No cookie for you because we already revealed the answer. Dailymotion, QVOD, all the V’s up there and YouTube… Malaysians memang love to watch videos. Moaaaar fuzzy cats?

OMG, BOSS STANDING BEHIND YOU!

Hahaha, made you look.

Malaysians also practically share a vital organ with their emails, since we know Gmail, Hotmail and now Yahoo Mail are all top searches. Naturally you would login every day for work too even if not into your own personal address, coz bulletin boards and letters are 6 feet under. So we know Malaysians login to their emails daily, aside from other daily things they do like, sleep, eat, do no. 2…

Oh, speaking of no. 2, you can play Poop Ball on Y8. We’d also recommend:

1. Bad Teeth Makeover
2. Whack Your Ex
3. Tug the Table 

OMG, BOSS STANDING BEHIND YOU!

Z for Zalora

Since we’re all comfortable – very, very comfortable – not getting out of our chairs and into malls for shopping, we can do it online on Zalora. Ala scary dystopian Wall-E movie. As their way of saying thanks, the nice people there have even agreed to absorb the cost of GST for next year to keep their prices competitive. Good luck with that credit card bill, ugaiz.

And what on earth is Zawara you ask? Also in the fashion line, Zawara is an advocate of modest styling:

“There is a frequent misconception that if clothing is described as modest, it is boring, outdated, and lacking personal style. We respectfully disagree!” – Zawara

409,523 Facebook users Like them, plus they’re big on Google Suggest, so who’s to doubt their formula.

Actually, what’s really interesting is Zoom A, which seems to be an interactive e-learning portal with 8,939,680 visitors. Canggih! We have questions:

1. Who’s behind it?
It was the brainchild of Gabungan Majlis Guru Besar Malaysia (GMGBM) and One Touch Education. The materials are prepared by the Zoom A panel, made up of school teachers.

2. Who goes there?
Any student from Standards 1 – 6 with an Internet connection. The secondary school curriculum will be included later. Teachers and parents are welcome to create accounts as well.

3. Why are people going there?
Aside from obtaining extra helpful academic materials (past year papers and clone papers for UPSR exams), the site enables students to connect with teachers outside their own schools which help them develop even more. Not to mention, if students can study from a TV screen (think Astro Tutor TV), they will benefit more from an interactive method of revision.

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Thus concludes our A to Z Google Malaysia search, guys. Combining the insight we got from Part 1 and Part 2, Malaysians have really become net savvy – that’s the short version. Now for the long version – Malaysians rely on the Internet to shop, find the best deals on air tickets, real estate, smartphones, etc., do our banking, pay our phone bills and loans, and read news. And we are big on social networking sites… you get the picture. So out of all the suggestions, the categories that were suggested most often were news portals and video sites. Maybe next year we’ll be back to see how our Google searches have developed!