CARY, N.C. -

2014 was rife with reward and loss. From the passing of one of our nation’s finest actors to the world’s largest and most-viewed sports competition, Google trend data for our most recently eclipsed year sheds light on what our information-craving nation was most interested in, while a seemingly infinite wealth of human knowledge is available literally at our fingertips.

It likely comes as no surprise that the top three most-searched items for the year ended up being Robin Williams, the World Cup and Ebola, according to Google. Those are just several points on the big list of hard-hitting news topics. There is, however, quite a bit to learn about what consumers were searching for in regards to the auto market, an industry that saw over $1.1 trillion in revenue for new and used U.S. auto sales in 2014, according to current data projected by TrueCar. That is an estimated 54 million units, 37 million of which are used vehicles. The latter represents a 3.3-percent increase in used-vehicles sales over 2013.

The domestic auto market had a shining year in terms of search interest. The top three brand-related searches on Google were for Ford, Jeep and Dodge, with General Motors following Toyota in fifth and Tesla rounding out the top ten.

The interest in the automotive industry peaked in the summer, with autos and vehicles making up 22 percent of the nation’s total searches at the end of July.

As far as a simple search of “used car” on Google, the state of Mississippi led all other states with the most searches, while Augusta, Ga. and Charlotte, N.C. were the top cities with the search.