Google.com – Top Gainers of 2005
1. Myspace
2. Ares
3. Baidu
4. wikipedia
5. orkut
6. iTunes
7. Sky News
8. World of Warcraft
9. Green Day
10. Leonardo da Vinci
Google News – Top Searches in 2005
1. Janet Jackson
2. Hurricane Katrina
3. tsunami
4. xbox 360
5. Brad Pitt
6. Michael Jackson
7. American Idol
8. Britney Spears
9. Angelina Jolie
10. Harry Potter
Great but why no listing for MSN search?
MSN seems to be the only major SE that has yet to post a 2005 top query list.
It’s fascinating comparing the top lists across the major search engines. It would be interesting to do a historical comparative study of queries over time.
You can use these popular query lists to predict trends in search in the future of search. For example, Britney, 50 Cent, Green Day, and other popular bands always seem to be on the popular list. I don’t think its a co-incidence that Google just rolled out enhanced music search capability.
Likewise, many of the queries are related to television and video media content and celebrities. Both Yahoo and Google have recently put a lot of focus on video search. However, there is still a lot to be done here. You can bet both Yahoo and Google are mining their massive data warehouses — treasure troves of user query data — to find the next major “vertical markets” to enter and to find types of searches that can be improved.
A fuller treatment of my thoughts can be found on my blog post on this topic.
It does appear that MSN has experimented in this direction – the site MSN Search Insider seems to track the top 200 weekly MSN searches. Unfortunately the data hasn’t been updated since Aug. 2005.