Death, technology, celebrities: A Search Paradise

January 1. 2008. The Google 2007 Year-End Zeitgeist has summed up the year’s top search queries to provide an insight into what’s likely to drive search in 2008 – the death of celebrities and technology.

The list from Google is an annual event that has the search giant studying the aggregation of billion of search queries from the past twelve months. Compiled from early December, late mass search inspiring terms do not make the cut.

Apple’s iPhone topped the list, leading a surcharge of search enquiries indicated that more than ever, consumers crave information on the latest gadgets.

Following iPhone, the top five search queries internationally included badoo, facebook, dailymotion and webkinz. Meanwhile the fastest falling terms were ‘world cup,’ Mozart, fifa, rebelde and kazaa.

Quarterly, a summary of the Google’s most popular news searches indicated users are increasingly after what could be labelled, non essential information. In January, ‘anna Nicole smith’ ignited Google traffic – in April, it was ‘virginia tech,’ in July ‘vanessa hudgens’ and in October, ‘pavorotti.’

Away from gadgets and celebrities, it’s clear the dominance of social networking in search shows no sign of slowing with the top sites leading the obvious contender charge. However, the popularity of terms like ‘webkinz,’ which are stuffed animals with online personas and video sharing site, Dailymotion, were surprise players in the game.

On the dominating technology front, Nintendo’s Wii and Xbox retained it’s search popularity throughout the year, while users increasingly requested information on HD DVD over the format’s rival, blu-ray.

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