|
Yahoo! and Ask.com respectively say Britney Spears and MySpace were the top search engine queries in 2006, underscoring America's obsession with celebrity and social networking. Because their lists are filtered free of pornography and sometimes also for generic words and company names, the findings cannot be completely validated, and editing is meant to make the top search queries more interesting, considering domination by pop culture and a focus on family friendly. Yahoo! gave the biggest number to Spears, who has led the annual list five out of the previous six years, with only American Idol besting her once. Following Spears in the 2006 Yahoo! rankings were World Wrestling Entertainment, Columbian pop star Shakira, singer Jessica Simpson, and Paris Hilton. Ask.com's leading query, MySpace, has grown substantially in popularity over the past few years and is now among the most visited sites online. Top search terms provided by Yahoo! and Ask assist marketers in measuring consumer interest in products and the success of ad campaigns, and Internet companies also publish some of the data in weekly, monthly, and yearly installments. Yahoo!'s top 10 are Spears, WWE, Shakira, Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton, American Idol, Beyonce Knowles, Chris Brown, and Pamela Anderson. Ask's are MySpace, Dictionary, Games, Cars, Food, Song Lyrics, Poems, New York, Baby Names, and Music, and Google's are Bebo, MySpace, World Cut, Metacafe, Radioblog, Wikipedia, Video, Rebelde, Mininova, and Wiki. Nielsen/NetRatings unfiltered list of top search queries is more mundane, with Google at number 1, Hotmail at number 9, and Pogo.com at number 10.
|