What are you searching for? The truth about web lists
Tom Whitwell Times Online December 22, 2006
At last, Britney Spears has something to be proud of. She's seen off attacks from Shakira, Jessica Simpson and Paris Hilton, and her name is the most searched-for phrase on the web, at least for Yahoo! users.
Meanwhile, Google users are more concerned about the World Cup and Bebo, while homely AOL users are searching for information about the weather, dogs and maps. At least that's what the search giants' PR departments are claiming.
It's become an end of year online ritual: every December, search engines publish lists of what web users have been searching for all year. Google started the trend with it's first Google Zeitgeist report in 2001, which identified the fastest-growing searches as "Nostradamus", "CNN" and "World Trade Center".
So why are the big three lists so diverse? This is a marketing exercise, not peer-reviewed scientific research, and some bloggers and commentators have pointed out that Yahoo! and AOL's lists seem to fit very neatly with their brand positioning.
Yahoo! sees itself as innovative, fun and youthful, and delivers a list full of young celebrities. AOL sees itself as safe, easy-to-use and reliable, and delivers a very sensible, down-to-earth list. The reality may be more complicated.
This year it is also possible to see how accurate these end-of-year lists are. In August AOL inadvertently released details of 20 million search queries from 650,000 users.
Analysis of this data shows that the top ten searches (and the vast majority of the top 500) were for brand names and competitive websites like Google, Yahoo! and MySpace. Weather was 14th on the list, Dictionary was 26th and 'Dogs' was well down the list, below 'sex', 'prom dresses', 'jokes' and 'song lyrics'.
Google says that its list isn't edited (although references to Google are removed). Rather than being a list of the most popular searches, it's calculated from the fastest-growing search terms.
It shouldn't be a surprise that the British-owned social networking site Bebo, which has gained 22 million registered users in the last 18 months, was at the top. It also explains why there is no 'adult content'. Sexual proclivities are diverse but relatively unchanging. Unless millions of people suddenly develop an enthusiasm for, say, Japanese bondage, these terms are unlikely to make Google's list.
Yahoo is the most open about how its version is compiled, admitting that their editors remove company names, formats (like MP3), general terms like "football" or "music" and adult phrases. With all that out of the way, perhaps it's no surprise that Britney Spears has been near the top of their list for four years running.
The lists:
Google
1. Bebo
2. Myspace
3. World Cup
4. Metacafe
5. Radioblog
6. Wikipedia
7. Video
8. Rebelde
9. Mininova
10. Wiki
Source: Google
AOL
1. Weather
2. Dictionary
3. Dogs
4. American Idol
5. Maps
6. Cars
7. Games
8. Tattoo
9. Horoscopes
10. Lyrics
Source: AOL
Yahoo!
1. Britney Spears
2. WWE
3. Shakira
4. Jessica Simpson
5. Paris Hilton
6. American Idol
7. Beyonce Knowles
8. Chris Brown
9. Pamela Anderson
10. Lindsay Lohan
Source: Yahoo
The real AOL list
1. google
2. ebay
3. yahoo
4. yahoo.com
5. mapquest
6. google.com
7. myspace.com
8. myspace
9. http://www.google.com/
10. http://www.yahoo.com/
Source: Dontdelete.com
Times Online most-searched phrases in 2006
1. Su doku
2. Competitions
3. Obituaries
4. Clarkson
5. University
6. Horoscopes
7. Airmiles
8. Rich List
9. Auction
10. Education
(Duplicates like 'competition' and 'competitions' removed, as is the No 1 search, a blank space when someone presses button by mistake)
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
TIME Person of the Year: You
From the December 25, 2006 issue of TIME magazine*
The "Great Man" theory of history is usually attributed to the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who wrote that "the history of the world is but the biography of great men." He believed that it is the few, the powerful and the famous who shape our collective destiny as a species. That theory took a serious beating this year.
To be sure, there are individuals we could blame for the many painful and disturbing things that happened in 2006. The conflict in Iraq only got bloodier and more entrenched. A vicious skirmish erupted between Israel and Lebanon. A war dragged on in Sudan. A tin-pot dictator in North Korea got the bomb, and the president of Iran wants to go nuclear too. Meanwhile nobody fixed global warming, and Sony didn't make enough PlayStation3s.But look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another story, one that isn't about conflict or great men. It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide Web. Not the Web that Tim Berners-Lee hacked together (15 years ago, according to Wikipedia) as a way for scientists to share research. It's not even the overhyped dotcom Web of the late 1990s. The new Web is a very different thing. It's a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it's really a revolution.Read Entire TIME Magazine Cover Story: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
From the December 25, 2006 issue of TIME magazine*
The "Great Man" theory of history is usually attributed to the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who wrote that "the history of the world is but the biography of great men." He believed that it is the few, the powerful and the famous who shape our collective destiny as a species. That theory took a serious beating this year.
To be sure, there are individuals we could blame for the many painful and disturbing things that happened in 2006. The conflict in Iraq only got bloodier and more entrenched. A vicious skirmish erupted between Israel and Lebanon. A war dragged on in Sudan. A tin-pot dictator in North Korea got the bomb, and the president of Iran wants to go nuclear too. Meanwhile nobody fixed global warming, and Sony didn't make enough PlayStation3s.But look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another story, one that isn't about conflict or great men. It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide Web. Not the Web that Tim Berners-Lee hacked together (15 years ago, according to Wikipedia) as a way for scientists to share research. It's not even the overhyped dotcom Web of the late 1990s. The new Web is a very different thing. It's a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it's really a revolution.Read Entire TIME Magazine Cover Story: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
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