Well 2009 is fast coming to an end, and it’s time to round up what were the hottest search trends of the year. Luckily, the popular websites have already done the hard work for us, each publishing their own sites’ hottest trends. Let’s put them all together.
Google and Bing
The two top search engines released their hottest searches of 2009 in late November. For Bing, the top search term was “Michael Jackson”. Surprisingly, the late pop star’s name was not the hottest search term on Google, nor was it “Swine flu” – it was, in fact, Windows 7. Michael Jackson did make it into second place on Google, and the phrase “Facebook login” was third. On Bing, hot search terms also included “Twitter” “the stock market” and “cash for clunkers”. In Google UK, Stephen Gately, a Boyzone (popular British boyband) member who died in October, was the top search term. Also hot was searches for Susan Boyle, the famed Britain’s Got Talent Singer.
Twitter searches took a more political spin – according to Twitter’s research team, #iranelection was the top Twitter news search term of the year. Second in line was Swine Flu, followed by Gaza, and fourthly, Iran. When it came to searching for people, Twitterers looked for, surprise surprise, Michael Jackson. Susan Boyle followed, and Adam Lambert, the American Idol contestant who was thisclose to winning in 2009, but lost out to Kris Allen. Hot movie searches included Harry Potter, New Moon, and District 9. Searches for TV shows focused on American Idol, Glee, and the Teen Choice Awards. The hottest technology searches were for Google Wave, Snow Leopard, and Tweetdeck.
Facebook, it turns out, was this year’s top search term overall, according to Experian Hitwise, which analyzed and chose the top 300 US search terms for 2009. Four various versions of “Facebook” were in the top 25 searches. This is a substantial climb from 2008, when it was at the bottom of the top 10 searches (MySpace was at the top). Indeed, social networking-related terms dominated the top search results, accounting for nearly 2.5 percent of the top 300 searches. It was no surprise that the most-visited website in 2009 was Google (it was in 2008 as well), with Yahoo Mail in second place, and Facebook in third.
Youtube
The major online video streaming website also released its most-watched videos of 2009. Susan Boyle made it into the top spot, far ahead of the pack. In a distant second was “David After Dentist”, followed by the “JK Wedding Entrance Dance”. Also intriguing was Youtube’s analysis of the fastest rising search terms for each month, which provide an interesting overview of the year:
January: inauguration
February: christian bale
March: the climb
April: susan boyle
May: pacquiao vs hatton
June: michael jackson thriller
July: michael jackson
August: usain bolt
September: kanye west
October: paranormal activity
November: bad romance
December: tiger woods
Kaila Krayewski is a freelance journalist with a passion for all things internet. Having worked for nearly two years as the public relations manager for an internation search engine optimization company, and publishing hundreds of articles (how-to, informational, and otherwise) on SEO, she knows a thing or two about the field. Furthermore, having just started up her own website blondetraveler.com, she is doing her best to keep one step ahead of the search engines in order to keep the traffic flowing.
Read other articles by Kaila Krayewski
Michael Jackson as hottest search term on Bing and second place on Google does not surprise me! The Facebook login coming in third place on Google is pretty standard and Susan Boyle on Youtube was probably watched and shown day after day by people for months! This summary of 2009′s hottest searches is great! Although not incredibly shocking it is nice to have the data presented in an orderly fashion.