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Top Annual Searches Starting to Roll In

By - December 01, 2008

Britney Again?!

Sorry, but I say this every year: The top searches from the engines each year are so damn BORING!

Ask

Yahoo

How I wish these lists told us something we didn’t already know!

Update: AOL (thanks Quayle)

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  • AdamW

    But if you didn’t have search engines, would you “already know”?

  • JG

    But wait.. didn’t you say five years ago how amazing the Google Zeitgeist was? Wasn’t that the inspiration to begin work on your book?

    And now this same exact concept is.. boring?

    Why the change? If it was exciting before, why is it boring now? Certainly the searches themselves change from year to year.. so it’s not like those are predictable. Or at least, they are no more predictable in 2008 than they were in 2003.

    So what’s the source of this change in your perception?

    (Personally, they were boring for me back in 2003, as well as now. But I have my own opinions about why that is the case. I’d like to hear yours, if I could?)

  • http://www.wannadevelop.com/ Mike @ WannaDevelop.com

    It’s nice to review and go down memory lane at the end of the year but my fav is Google’s :)

    The lists just help to further remind us that the internet is a very diverse and crazy place to begin with and expect the unexpected (sometimes) ! Gotta love it

    Mike

  • http://battellemedia.com John Battelle

    @JG – It was so exciting to sense what depth lay below the surface of that first Zeitgeist. But they are never plumbed.

  • http://most-searched.info nmw

    I don’t recall seeing Dictionary.COM results in earlier years. Interesting trend — who would have thought that?

    http://gaggle.info/miscellaneous/articles/wisdom-of-the-language

    ;) nmw

  • http://www.oyuncambazi.com Oyun

    Certainly the searches themselves change from year to year.. so it’s not like those are predictable. Or at least, they are no more predictable in 2008 than they were in 2003.

  • http://hot.aol.com/2008 Quayle

    AOLs year end list has a ton more stuff than Yahoo & Ask.

    Check out the Odds & Ends lists…lots of interesting content.

    Don’t forget about AOL Search John…one of the highest converting audiences on line.

  • JG

    It was so exciting to sense what depth lay below the surface of that first Zeitgeist. But they are never plumbed.

    But to come to Google’s defense.. isn’t that the whole point of Google Trends? There is a service for you to plumb those depths yourself, if you want. Right?

  • http://battellemedia.com John Battelle

    @JG – yes….Google Trends is good.

  • http://www.ticketpoint.de Flüge

    Why don’t you compare the lists internationally? This would told you something about the search culture of the different nations for example. I wouldn’t expect Britney Spears and all those boring celebs on top positions on google.de. Unfortunately I haven’t found a similar ranking for the results going through German search engines.