Google, Yahoo, Ask and Lycos have released* their top search terms for the past year (2008) and I have aggregated it to your convenience in one happy table below.
I don’t have anything smart to say about it but I did manage to pull out five intriguing insights.
My Five Cents:
- As done last year, it seems like Y! have removed all the navigational queries from their report (I wonder why ;)
- “Poker” is the “Top Search Term Of The Year” for for the 3rd consecutive year on Lycos… (what is Lycos? :)
- Though she didn’t make it to the White House, US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin captured the zeitgeist of internet users in 2008 while Obama in the 6th place.
- IMHO, Ask.com is just being too honest in their report – 50% of Ask search terms are navigational queries and the rest are boring.
- Britney Spears has been the most popular search term at Yahoo for seven of the past eight years!
Top Search Terms | 2008
| # | Yahoo | Ask | Lycos | |
| 1 | sarah palin | Britney Spears | Dictionary | Poker |
| 2 | beijing 2008 | WWE | MySpace | Paris Hilton |
| 3 | facebook login | Barack Obama | YouTube | |
| 4 | tuenti | Miley Cyrus | YouTube | Golf |
| 5 | heath ledger | RuneScape | Sarah Palin | |
| 6 | obama | Jessica Alba | Coupons | Britney Spears |
| 7 | nasza klasa | Naruto | Cars | Clay Aiken |
| 8 | wer kennt wen | Lindsay Lohan | Craigslist | Pamela Anderson |
| 9 | euro 2008 | Angeline Jolie | Online degrees | |
| 10 | jonas brothers | American Idol | Credit score | Holly Madison |
Update (18 Dec. 2008): Top 10 search queries that people used on Delicious in 2008 are: news, blogs, reference, wiki, restaurants, hotels, css, web 2.0, artists, music… I think it is loud-and-clear that the biggest bookmarking site isn’t fulfilling its search potential (!)
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* Note: Microsot (Live) didn’t released the updated list until now and AOL didn’t break out overall terms so wasn’t included here.
