Yahoo! were the first of the major search engines to reveal its top search terms for the year, listing the top ten keyword searches on Sunday. Google, although not publishing its official list until nearer the end of the year responded by listing the “fastest rising U.S. search terms”. The comparisons make for interesting reading.

First we have Yahoo!, who judging by the list is mainly used by teenage girls looking for the latest news on their favourite celebrities from the music and movie world, and middle aged men who get off on looking at pictures of those very same celebrities.

The top queries of the year on Yahoo!:

1. Britney Spears
2. WWE
3. Paris Hilton
4. Naruto
5. Beyonce
6. Lindsay Lohan
7. Rune Scape
8. Fantasy Football
9. Fergie
10. Jessica Alba

Naturally Britney is still at number one, but I’m guessing this year’s searched were people more looking for stories of her latest screw up, rather than desperately trying to hear her new song.

WWE? Is that still going? I’m British… can’t see the appeal myself.

Jessica Alba, yes, that’s a very deserving tenth place for the curvy woman who always tends to play the sexy, talented girl, in every movie she’s ever been in. Moving on.

Yahoo have actually extended its results, giving the top searches in a number of other categories. You can see the full breakdown here.

Google really hate being outdone by Yahoo, or anyone else for that matter, so Marissa Mayer, VP of Search and User Experience revealed its top ten on the Today Show yesterday, courtesy of TechCrunch:

The fastest rising U.S. search terms on Google:

1. iPhone
2. Webkinz
3. tmz
4. Transformers
5. YouTube
6. Club Penguin
7. MySpace
8. Heroes
9. Facebook
10. Anna Nicole Smith

Obviously this list doesn’t represent the actual physical number of searches made for each term on Google, instead focussing on the fastest rising, but its still notably different from the Yahoo top ten.

It seems Google users are more technology minded than their Yahoo brethren, and the only celebrity that got a look in was Anna Nicole Smith, mainly by virtue of dying under suspicious circumstances.

It’s no surprise to see the iPhone at the top of the list, as the amount of articles written about the Apple product in the last year has been phenomenal, and the consumers appetite for information even more so.

MySpace won the battle of the social networks, but only just, and I predict Facebook overtaking at some point in the not too distant future.

So what does all this teach us in reality? Nothing much if I’m honest, but it’s a nice diversion from the normal bad news that seems to be happening around the world at the moment. Same time next year?

Related:

Entry was posted on Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 at 4:41 pm under Google, Internet, Yahoo!.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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