What did you search for this year?

As with so many December traditions, the Top Ten List seems to dominate.  From Barbara Walters to Yahoo, everyone wants to summarize who or what seemed important in 2008.  With this idea, Yahoo, Google and Ask.com have all released their lists of the top ten searches made on their sites this past year.  By the way, on Yahoo, for example, generic searches like “car” and most company names are ignored. 

What should definitely be noted when comparing these lists are the various views of who uses which websites and for what.  Yahoo and Google seem to be the most main stream, so their searches reflect a more general type of population.  While Ask.com seems to attract a more specific crowd.  Think of the first two as major chain supermarkets and the latter as Whole Foods Market.  You can buy TP or bananas at both, but the clients at Whole Foods Market are often more particular of why and where they are doing their shopping.  Such is the life of a search engine user.  So, please, don’t act surprised that Britney Spears tops Yahoo!’s list, Obama tops Google’s but the term “dictionary” is number one on Ask.com.  The internet is diverse. How reassuring that the search engines users are too…  here are the lists based on search queries.

Yahoo

1. Britney Spears

2. WWE

3. Barack Obama

4. Miley Cyrus

5. RuneScape

6. Jessica Alba

7. Naruto

8. Lindsay Lohan

9. Angelina Jolie

10. American Idol

Ask.com

1. Dictionary

2. MySpace

3. Google

4. YouTube

5. Facebook

6. Coupons

7. Cars

8. Craigslist

9. Online degrees

10. Credit score

Google

1. Obama

2. Facebook

3. ATT

4. iPhone

5. YouTube

6. Fox News

7. Palin

8. Beijing 2008

9. David Cook

10. Surf the channel