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January 18, 2007
Search 2006: A Reflection of Mass Culture?
by Richard Drawhorn
Now that the year 2006 has passed, the search engines have released data on the most searched for terms of the year. In this post, I'll take a look at the top 10 search terms for Google, Yahoo! and Windows Live and see if any trends can be identified.
The top 10 search terms of 2006 are displayed below for the three top search engines on the internet:
| Top Search Terms of 2006 | |||
| Live.com | Yahoo! | ||
| 1 | Ronaldinho | Bebo | Britney Spears |
| 2 | Shakira | MySpace | WWE |
| 3 | Paris Hilton | World Cup | Shakira |
| 4 | Britney Spears | Metacafe | Jessica Simpson |
| 5 | Harry Potter | Radio Blog | Paris Hilton |
| 6 | Eminem | Wikipedia | American Idol |
| 7 | Pamela Anderson | Video | Beyonce Knowles |
| 8 | Hilary Duff | Rebelde | Chris Brown |
| 9 | Rebelde | Mininova | Pamela Anderson |
| 10 | Angelina Jolie | Wiki | Lindsay Lohan |
| Source: ClickZ's The Year in Search: A 2006 Review | |||
The most obvious similarity between the various top search terms is that the majority of them come directly from pop culture. At least half of the top searches done in 2006 were for the names of celebrities like Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, etc. The second largest group seems to be centered around internet related buzzwords such as MySpace, Bebo, Wiki, Mininova, etc. Another small fraction come from the world of sports like Ronaldinho, World Cup, and WWE. At the risk of pointing out the obvious, one might conclude that people in modern society are primarily interested in reading about pop culture, internet trends, and sports.
It's interesting to note, however, that the top overall search terms seemed to vary quite a bit from engine to engine. The lists for Windows Live and Yahoo! are dominated by celebrity searches, while Google has reported many of the internet related search terms. This may be due to the way these different results were compiled, but it seems to suggest that people are more inclined to search for information about celebrities on MSN or Yahoo! than they are on Google. Could this be a reflection of the default home page layout for these engines? The home pages for Yahoo! and MSN are clearly information portals, while the default home page for Google is more spartan (although it too can be customized). Perhaps the differences in interfaces has attracted a different set of users, but given the fact that Paris Hilton appears at the top of Google News searches, this argument does not seem to hold up. My guess is that the methods used to compile the search data could account for these differences rather than any significant differences in user base.
Whatever the explanations for these trends may be, it's interesting to see what the top search terms are for the various engines. You can view the information at the sources if you're interested:
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