As the whole of Iran is preparing for a cooler season this month, entertainment played a larger role and occupied a prime spot in online searches.
Our short-term survey showed surprising results, such as the death of an actor and a sportsman becoming a hot topic of conversation around the country.
Long-Term Results
The Persian word for picture "Aks" knocks download off the top spot for this month's long-term results. As with previous month's results, the southern province of Fars, with the city of Shiraz, claims the top spot. Again, similar to the previous month, the top website hits for this search are namakstan.ir, a local celebrity and gossip site, followed by jahaniha.com.
Like last month, "Ahang" meaning music remains popular, pushing its way up to second place. As with previous month's results, the Caspian Sea province of Mazandaran continues to outweigh the rest of the country in terms of proportional downloads, the northern city of Sari just pips Tehran's neighbor Karaj for first place. Searches for movies have also grown in the long-term results, with the search "film" in Persian taking the No. 3 spot this month. Iranians across the country like to download and watch movies, but this month Mazandaran has been pushed down to fourth place by the Persian Gulf province of Bushehr, which has searched for it more than the rest of the country.
"Download Ahang" written in Persian, meaning "download music" moves into fourth and fifth spots this month, and Mazandaran leads with neighboring northern provinces tagging on for good measure. The usual crowd of Iranian pop stars appears in the list.
In sixth place among our long-term results is "Bazi", which has remained relatively in the same place as in the previous month. The southern province of Bushehr is followed here by the northern province of Golestan.
This is closely followed in terms of search number by Google written in English. The northeastern province of Khorasan Razavi leads in terms of people heading for the search engine. It is followed by the northwestern province of West Azarbaijan.
What's interesting is that people often type "Google" into Google, a situation not exclusive to Iranian Internet users.
"Daneshgah Azad" which translates to Azad University in English follows in eighth place with the far western province of Kermanshah leading the search query. This search for one specific university shows the popularity of the academic institution in the long-term results.
Coming in at number nine is the search "Zan" meaning woman or wife in Persian. The search term does trend through the middle of September with comments on women in news articles dropping their kids off at school in private cars. Also, the search result also touches on personal health issues of women.
At No. 10 this month is "download film" written in Persian. Bushehr like the previous result is leading the way with "download new film" being the largest search in this segment.
Rising Trends
It's a sad Persian calendar month with two high-profile deaths in popular culture trending on our rising trends this month. The first of which is the death of young actor, Ali Tabatabaei, who died suddenly at the age of 23, according to Mehr News Agency.
Tabatabaei is our breakout term this month, which garnered a lot of attention this month from his apparently peers. The search results this month went viral upon the news of the young actor's death on August 21.
The next trending celebrity death this month is Wings of Strength 2014 Champion, bodybuilder Baitollah Abbaspour. Mazandaran and Tehran led the search queries this month for the bodybuilder's death.
In third place this month is a religious search term. Imam Reza (PBUH) trends, as his martyrdom anniversary in 818 in the Khorasan city of Tous falls in this month. As expected, Khorasan Razavi leads the search queries followed by the holy city of Qom, south of Tehran.
Internet shopping is our next rising term this month, with a growth of 180% in search terms. Sheypour is one of the contenders to grab a slice of the consumer-to-consumer business market. It is up against other websites like Divar.ir that currently leads the pack.
In fifth place with 150% growth this month is the search term "Zelzeleh" meaning earthquake in English. This search topic peaks twice in the past month with two small earthquakes occurring around the capital Tehran. East Azarbaijan has also been rocked by them recently and they too are searching for the natural disaster.
Like our long-term results, "Daneshgah Azad" peaks in the rising trends' list this month in sixth place. As previously mentioned, Kermanshah province is searching the university out. The website getting the most hits in this category is stunews.ir.
In seventh and eighth places this month, like in our previous, university entrance exams are playing on the minds of youths, with searches for the official league table website and university listings' site growing 130%. The northeastern city of Mashhad leads in these results followed by Shiraz and Tehran.
Tehran University in ninth and Payam e-Noor University in 10th places are also being searched, as the entrance exam results recently came out and acceptance letters went out to concerned applicants.
For Tehran University searches, predictably, students of Tehran are looking for the results of the entrance exam, with Mashhad leading the way for PEM searches.
