Hot Searches of 2005

I hope you had a great holiday break and good start to the year 2006! Have you noticed that the year's most popular searches are big news? The media landscape is now unthinkable without Internet search engines, and the big search engines like Google and Yahoo! have become an important, real-time barometer of trends and crazes. So what where the most popular searches in 2005?

Top News Searches on Google in 2005

1. Janet Jackson
2. Hurricane Katrina
3. tsunami
4. xbox 360
5. Brad Pitt
6. Michael Jackson
7. American Idol
8. Britney Spears
9. Angelina Jolie
10. Harry Potter

Top Shopping Searches on Froogle in 2005

Apple's ipod ranks four times amongst the top ten shopping searches!

1. ipod
2. digital camera
3. mp3 player
4. ipod mini
5. psp
6. laptop
7. xbox
8. ipod shuffle
9. computer desk
10. ipod nano

For more Google Zeitgeist for 2005, including some great graphs of search volumes over time on selected terms, visit http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist2005.html. At Yahoo!, the top searches were slightly different:

Top Searches on Yahoo! for 2005

1. Britney Spears
2. 50 Cent
3. Cartoon Network
4. Mariah Carey
5. Green Day
6. Jessica Simpson
7. Paris Hilton
8. Eminem
9. Ciara
10. Lindsay Lohan

Top Shopping Searches on Yahoo! in 2005

1. digital cameras
2. flowers
3. ipod
4. nike
5. prom dresses
6. psp
7. xbox 360
8. Halloween costumes
9. shoes
10. roses

Top Yahoo! News Searches of 2005

1. tsunami
2. Iraq
3. Michael Jackson trial
4. Natalee Holloway
5. Afghanistan
6. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
7. Hurricane Katrina
8. Cindy Sheehan
9. President Bush
10. Tom Cruise

You can get the full list of top 2005 searches on Yahoo! at http://tools.search.yahoo.com/top2005/

Posted by Nancy Hackett at 2:03 AM GMT