I found a very nice interactive website that compares similar events and their google search result in different countries for the year 2012. This website allows you to explore events and connect them with how people around the world saw them too. It not only informs you but it makes you realize connections that you may have not bee able to realize without seeing the data in the map. One thing I would have done different would be to allow the user to look for specific events. even though this would through the purpose of the most searched, it would also connect more to the user. I really liked the animation of the red cops dropping after you select a pin. It makes you realize that something changed in the map.

I recommend you to just explore it and have fun with it:

http://www.google.com/zeitgeist/2012/#explore