When You Don’t Know Number One

Google has announced its Zeitgeist list for 2006.

I always thought this list should be their most popular searches. It’s not. Year after year the most popular search terms are pretty much the same… and I’m sure the Google boys didn’t want to let on what people are really searching for.

No specifics, but by and large, you’re perverted!

As Google’s corporate voice explains:

We looked for those searches that were very popular in 2006 but were not as popular in 2005 — the explosive queries, the topics that everyone obsessed over. To come up with this list, we looked at several thousand of 2006’s most popular searches, and ranked them based on how much their popularity increased compared to 2005.

Indulge me a moment. There are some entries we do have to discuss. For instance, number one on Google’s master list is Bebo. Yes – the world is searching for Bebo. I have no clue what Bebo is (and until a moment ago, I was going to type ‘who it is’)!

Let’s put this in perspective – each time I type Bebo, my spell checker reminds me I’ve done something wrong!

From Wikipedia: Bebo (pronounced “Bee-boh”) is a social networking website, designed to allow friends to communicate in various ways. It has developed into an online community where users can post pictures, write blogs and send messages to one another, and is similar in format to MySpace, hi5.com, Xanga and Yahoo! 360.

Inferred in that is, I’m too old (or too married) to ‘get’ a social networking site. That’s depressing.

There are a few other interesting tidbits to be found. There was lots of buzz off the net (aka – the real world) this year for Dancing with the Stars and Project Runway. They’re both rounding errors compared to American Idol!

Likewise, the Super Bowl, World Series and Olympics paled in comparison to the World Cup – a non-event in the United States.

If you’re romantic, the Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes wedding took 4 of the top-10 spots in the marriage list. Next year, we’ll see how the breakup rates.

Finally, who are the Cheetah Girls and why do so many people want tickets? Can a huge touring act be completely under my radar? Am I that unhip?

3 thoughts on “When You Don’t Know Number One”

  1. To me, the most surprising, and perhaps most significant, item on the google list is autism. As a parent of an elementary school child, I see an ever increasing trend toward the pathologizing of childhood behaviors, especially in boys. Autism is a greatly expanding illness, and the “Rainman” kind of autism is not where the expansion is taking place; rather, more and more childhood behaviors that used to be consider normal phases of development (particularly male development) are being considered forms of autism, and are being treated with a wide range of (under-proven) drugs. The appearance of autism on google’s list probably reflects the increasingly wide-spread “diagnosis” of autism by teachers and school psychologists. A very scary thought…

  2. the most surprising was the #6 top search of the year – wikipedia. Why would you use a search engine to find wikipedia? It’s like using Google to find Yahoo. OK, not EXCTLY like that, but still, kinda odd.

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