20 December 2006

Bebo and Paris Hilton dominate the top Google searches in 2006

Some may despair at the news that billionaire heiress Paris Hilton and would-be-pirate Orlando Bloom sit side by side atop Google News' top searches of 2006. However, in this increasingly celebrity-obsessed world, it's reassuring to find that eight out of the top ten Google searches of 2006 were for social networking sites, with Bebo and MySpace in first and second place respectively.







The 2006 Year-End Google Zeitgeist is of particular interest when compared to the top Google searches of 2005, in which MySpace topped the search terms and the results as a whole were peppered with comparatively fewer social networking terms.

Moreover, since 2006 was host to one of the biggest sporting events in the world, it's no surprise to see the term, 'world cup' sitting in third place in the rankings. This, along with the term 'video', was among the few searches in the top ten that didn't relate to social networking sites directly.

Google News' top searches for 2006 sees a wider range of results. In fact, the aforementioned celebrities come just ahead of 'cancer', 'podcasting' and 'Hurricane Katrina'. This reveals only slight differences between the pattern of results in 2005 and 2006; last year, 'Janet Jackson' topped the Google News searches, while 'Hurricane Katrina' came in second.

So what do these results reveal about Google users? It's clear that, while high-profile celebrities will always appear in the top search terms, Google users are most keen to find out about new, innovative internet technology. For the moment, the attention of these users seems firmly fixed on the social networking revolution.

Despite garnering some not so favourable press this year, Bebo and MySpace show no sign of fading from public consciousness, with figures indicating 20,000,000 registered Bebo users and a staggering 100 million MySpace accounts - a number which continues to grow.

Other new media searches included in Google's most popular searches of 2006 were 'metacafe', a young video sharing site, and 'radioblog', a site which offers users the chance to hear music posted by fledgling artists and bands.

With the growth of new and existing social networking sites showing no signs of abating, it's difficult to predict if the most popular Google search terms of 2007 will be much altered from the 2006 rankings. However, if the last two years are anything to go by, it's safe to assume that social and community sharing oriented sites will continue to capture the imagination of people using the world's most popular search engine.

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