Canadians were pragmatic Googlers in 2011, making the census website and the Canada Post strike two of the three fastest-rising searches of the year, Google reported Thursday.

While the lighter topic of Skyrim, a new role-playing videogame, also made the top three in Canada overall, Canadians were less focused on celebrities and consumer technology than the rest of the world, Google's annual "Zeitgeist" listing of top search trends showed.

Globally, the fastest-rising queries in order were Rebecca Black, Google Plus and Ryan Dunn. "Fastest rising" refers to the terms with the highest growth during the year.

On a more serious note, terms related to the Japanese earthquake showed up on the "fastest-rising" lists from almost half of 48 countries included in Zeitgeist, Google said on its blog.

In fact, 東京 電力(TEPCO), owner of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan, reached #8 on the global list, becoming the first non-Latin term to make the global fastest-rising list.

The complete top 10 fastest rising search terms in Canada were:

1. www.census2011.gc.ca

2. Skyrim

3. Canada Post strike

4. Rebecca Black

5. Ryan Dunn

6. Japan earthquake

7. Game of Thrones

8. Jack Layton

9. Royal wedding

10. Google Plus

Google said in a statement that the Canadian search popularity of the census website was "perhaps not so surprising when you consider that 98 per cent of Canadians responded to the census ... many of them online."

In Canada, celebrities remained the most-searched people (Rebecca Black, Pippa Middleton and Ryan Dunn were the top three) and images (topped by Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez and Kim Kardashian.)

As far as news went, the top three searches of interest to Canadians were Japan, the Vancouver Canucks and Libya.

Google released the fastest-rising searches for 48 countries Thursday as part of its annual year-end roundup of top trends, based on the analysis of billions of search queries entered into its web search engine each year.

The top Google searches in Canada from 2008 to 2011