diff --git a/app/logical/popular_search_service.rb b/app/logical/popular_search_service.rb
index ecf40478a..b61d83a48 100644
--- a/app/logical/popular_search_service.rb
+++ b/app/logical/popular_search_service.rb
@@ -26,6 +26,6 @@ class PopularSearchService
         end
       end
       response
-    end
+    end.force_encoding("utf-8")
   end
 end