The top search term on Google.com in 2006 was “Bebo” followed by “MySpace” in second place, which shows how embedded the two top social networking sites are in our “collective consciousness”, as Google puts it.

In third place “world cup” demonstrates that soccer or football truly is a popular international sport, while “metacafe” and “radioblog” in fourth and fifth spots came as a little surprise. Metacafe is a online video hosting site in the same vein as Youtube, while Radio.blog is a standalone player that allows you to stream sound on your web site.

In sixth place was “wikipedia”, which I find quite amusing since, as we all know, Wikipedia, is an online encyclopedia, which allows people to search for information about key terms. Surely you’d go straight to Wikipedia to search for information rather than first type in wikipedia into Google.

The full list of top searches in Google.com is as follows: 

  1. bebo
  2. myspace
  3. world cup
  4. metacafe
  5. radioblog
  6. wikipedia
  7. video
  8. rebelde
  9. mininova
10. wiki

Google also announced its top searches for Google News, the top two searchers was “paris hilton” and “orlando bloom”, which goes to show that no matter what’s happening in the world, people are always interested in celebrity gossip. How interesting that it was these two celebrities, in particular, that have captured the interest of Google News users!

Strangely “podcasting” was in fourth place, which tends to indicate that there are more people interested in searching for news about podcasts, than there are people who actually want to listen to podcasts (that’s a joke by the way).

Also of interest was the sixth most popular search term “bankruptcy”, which tends to suggest that even online we take a great interest in other people’s misfortunes.

Here are the top ten search terms on Google News:

  1. paris hilton
  2. orlando bloom
  3. cancer
  4. podcasting
  5. hurricane katrina
  6. bankruptcy
  7. martina hingis
  8. autism
  9. 2006 nfl draft
10. celebrity big brother 2006

Related:

Entry was posted on Wednesday, December 20th, 2006 at 4:12 am under Internet, Technology, Web2.0.

Read more entries by John Pospisil.
Stumble It!