The meme first started gaining traction last week and is attributed to a silly video from a vlogger named "Filthy Frank." Though it was another user named SunnyCoastSkate who then established the form we've become familiar with: the jump cut, the helmet, etc. 

The spin-offs spread very quickly. As of Feb 11th, around 12,000 "Harlem Shake" videos had been posted since the start of the month and they'd already been watched upwards of 44 million times. At its peak, over 4,000 of these videos were being uploaded per day.

Nova Scotia led all searches for the Harlem Shake. And it was the university towns of Waterloo, Guelph and London who were the top 3 Canuck towns doing the shake on Google.

Pope Odds
Within hours of Pope Benedict XVI’s abdication, major bookmakers started placing odds on his successor, with Cardinals from Ghana and Nigeria among the early favourites.We looked at the top 5 frontrunners according to the bookies. See trends chart here. Ghana’s Cardinal Turkson is seen as the frontrunner by the bookies and he’s leading global searches by a 2:1 margin. Canada’s Cardinal Ouellet ranks third in terms of Google searches worldwide.

Target effect 
With Target set to open its first stores in Canada next month, interest in the retailer is beginning to pick up just as searches for other retailers look to be taking a dip. While Target trails most major national retailers in terms of Google searches, it recently caught up and passed searches for The Bay.

Finance
‘Tis the season for RRSPs! Canadian searches for RRSPs are down by nearly a third since Tax Free Savings Accounts (TFSAs) were introduced.

Horse Recipes 
As recent news from Europe suggests, horses are not just for riding.Canadian searches for “horse recipes” spiked in February jumping to an all-time high. Searches for equine dishes were most popular in Alberta and BC.

Posted by Aaron Brindle, Google Canada