Johnny Depp Tops Google's 2022 Trending People List; Amber Heard Comes In Third

Johnny Depp secured the top spot on Google's 2022 trending people list in the United States.

The American multinational company released its "2022 Year In Search — Themes and Insights" report on Wednesday, and it showed that the 59-year-old "Pirates of the Caribbean" star topped the search engine's list under the people category.

The data reportedly reflected the year's trending topics and included people who had a high spike in traffic over a sustained period in 2022 compared to last year, NBC reported.

Following the actor, "Men In Black" star Will Smith earned the second spot, while Depp's ex-wife, Amber Heard, who lost to the actor in the highly publicized defamation trial in June, made it to No. 3.

Rounding out the top 10 for the U.S. tending list are Antonio Brown, Kari Lake, Anna Sorokin (Delvey), Chris Rock, Andrew Tate, Adam Levine and Serena Williams.

The top five overall trending searches on the platform include Wordle, election results, Betty White, Queen Elizabeth and Bob Saget.

Earlier this year, Depp and the 36-year-old "Aquaman" actress faced a seven-person jury at Fairfax County, Virginia, in a bombshell defamation trial, People reported.

Heard was ordered to pay her ex-husband total damages of $10.35 million, including $10 million in compensatory damages and $350,000 in punitive damages for accusing Depp of domestic violence in her 2018 op-ed for the Washington Post.

But the actress recently appealed the court's decision with her new lawyers from Ballard Spahr, David Axelrod and Jay Ward Brown, and demanded a reversal or a new trial, claiming that the result has a "chilling effect" on women who struggle to speak out on domestic violence.

"The trial court also erred in overruling Heard's demurrer, in which she argued that the challenged statements are non-actionable expressions of opinion and are not reasonably capable of conveying the alleged defamatory implication," her legal team said in the documents obtained by People.

"That holding, if allowed to stand, undoubtedly will have a chilling effect on other women who wish to speak about abuse involving powerful men," they added.

Depp, however, also appealed against Heard's counterclaim win, arguing that the decision was "erroneous," despite being presented with "novel, and complex legal and factual issues," in a filing last month.

Since the conclusion of the trial, the award-winning actor has appeared before the public once again, attending star-studded Hollywood events, including Rihanna's Savage X Fenty Vol. 4 fashion show last month, making a surprise appearance at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards, and releasing new music with English rock guitarist Jeff Beck in August.

Meanwhile, Heard has opted to shy away from the limelight and focus on raising her 19-month-old daughter Oonagh.