The Year V Actually Outranked Lisa in Global Search

V’s global search ranking became one of the more frequently cited data points in K-pop coverage after Allkpop’s year-end compilation of Google Trends data placed him at No. 1 among the most-searched K-pop idols worldwide, ahead of BLACKPINK’s Lisa at No. 3.

The ranking, covering January through December 2024, has continued to circulate in fan discussions well after its original publication, largely because it offers something rarer than a follower count: a measure of pure curiosity rather than audience size.

It’s worth being precise about what this data actually is. Google Trends measures relative search interest over time within a specific period and region, not total popularity, follower counts, or revenue.

Allkpop’s list is a media compilation built from that Trends data, not an official ranking published by Google itself, since Google’s own Year in Search doesn’t publish a dedicated K-pop idol category.

A separate compilation covering just the first half of 2024 showed the same pattern, with V topping global search interest and Lisa appearing in the top five.

Both datasets point the same direction, but both are limited to 2024, and I found no equivalent 2026-dated compilation confirming whether that gap still holds today.

What made V’s search dominance notable in 2024 is that it happened largely without new music. He was serving in the military for much of that period, a stretch when public figures typically see search interest decline due to reduced visibility.

Instead, his search volume stayed elevated, driven by ongoing interest in his military service updates, sporadic content like the digital single “FRI(END)S,” and residual attention from his solo album cycle the year before.

That’s a meaningfully different growth pattern than an artist actively promoting new work, and it’s part of why the ranking drew attention from outlets covering search behavior specifically.

Lisa’s search presence during the same window reflected a different kind of activity. She placed in the top three to five depending on the specific compilation, tracking alongside her group’s continued global visibility and her expanding solo ventures.

Where V’s search interest appeared to spike around personal visibility moments even during limited promotion, Lisa’s has more consistently tracked alongside active release cycles, tours, and brand campaigns, a pattern that shows up in her Instagram and Spotify records more clearly than in search-specific data.

That distinction matters for understanding what each metric reveals. Google Trends captures curiosity, what people are actively typing into a search bar, often driven by a specific triggering event.

Instagram followers and Spotify streams capture sustained audience size and consumption. An artist can lead in one without leading in the other, and V and Lisa’s 2024 numbers illustrate that split clearly: search interest favored V during that period, while platform-specific audience metrics like Instagram followers and Spotify milestones have more consistently favored Lisa.

Online discussion of the 2024 rankings has continued sporadically since, particularly on Reddit and X, where fans have debated whether search interest is a meaningful popularity measure at all, given how easily a single viral moment can skew a short-term ranking.

TikTok clips referencing the Allkpop list have circulated periodically, often framed around the surprise of V’s ranking given his reduced public activity that year.

None of this amounts to a sustained viral moment, more a recurring talking point that resurfaces in comparison content.

What’s confirmed is specific and dated: in a widely cited 2024 compilation of Google Trends data, V ranked ahead of Lisa in global search interest for that calendar year.

What isn’t confirmed is whether that gap persists in 2026, since no comparably sourced current-year data was available at the time of writing.

Readers interested in the more recent picture should look for updated Google Trends compilations as they’re published, rather than treating a 2024 snapshot as an ongoing fact.

Read More: Lisa Extends Her Record as Google’s Most-Searched Female K-Pop Idol