2003's Most Wanted Search Terms
The most popular search terms of the past year reveal as much about the interests of searchers as they do about the perceived 'personalities' of the major search engines.
The most popular search terms of the past year reveal as much about the interests of searchers as they do about the perceived “personalities” of the major search engines.
The results are relatively similar at Google, Lycos and Yahoo, with pop tart Britney Spears featured prominently on all three top ten lists. Stars, movies, and sports dominate the top ten.
Interestingly, over at Ask Jeeves, the top ten searches are strikingly different. Topping the list: song lyrics, followed by dictionary definitions and ringtones for cell phones. Apparently people really do perceive Ask Jeeves as a different type of search engine.
Each of these services publish regularly updated lists of popular search terms throughout the year, and if you’re not familiar with them, they offer a trove of useful information. They provide an online barometer of what’s on the world’s mind, revealing new trends and crazes. But they can also serve as useful resources for search term research, and can help focus your own search engine marketing campaigns.
The four services are Ask Jeeves weekly SearchIQ, Google’s weekly Zeitgeist, Lycos’ daily Lycos 50, and Yahoo’s daily Buzz Index.
For more information on using these search stats as data mining tools for search term research, check out this profile of Aaron Schatz, compiler of the Lycos 50.
Here’s a quick look at the top ten results for the four major search engines that reported their stats:
Ask Jeeves
1. Song lyrics
2. Dictionary
3. Free Ringtones
4. Games
5. Maps
6. Jokes
7. Driving Directions
8. Horoscopes
9. Baby Names
10. Prom Dresses
Ask Jeeves plans to publish their full list of top searches, including break outs for news, health, product and other categories later today or tomorrow. I’ll publish the link in the online version of this issue when it’s available.
Google’s 2003 Year-End Zeitgeist
Resources
Analytics The 2023 B2B Superpowers Index
Analytics Data Analytics in Marketing
Digital Marketing The Third-Party Data Deprecation Playbook
Digital Marketing Utilizing Email To Stop Fraud-eCommerce Client Fraud Case Study
1. britney spears
2. harry potter
3. matrix
4. shakira
5. david beckham
6. 50 cent
7. iraq
8. lord of the rings
9. kobe bryant
10. tour de france
Google offers extensive information about a variety of search categories, including popular news, products, images and country specific categories. You can also compare this year’s popular terms with the 2002 Year-End Zeitgeist and the 2001 Year-End Zeitgeist.
The Top 100 items of the year 2003 at Lycos, with last year’s rank in parentheses.
1. KaZaA (2)
2. Britney Spears (4)
3. Dragonball (1)
4. Paris Hilton (-)
5. IRS (7)
6. Kobe Bryant (-)
7. Christmas (9)
8. NFL (6)
9. Pamela Anderson (10)
10. Brooke Burke (34)
Lycos also makes the Top 100 of 2002 and the Top 100 of 2001 available online.
Yahoo’s Top Search Terms of 2003
1. KaZaA
2. Harry Potter
3. American Idol
4. Britney Spears
5. 50 Cent
6. Eminem
7. WWE
8. Paris Hilton
9. NASCAR
10. Christina Aguilera
Top queries at Yahoo from previous years are no longer available.
A couple of other interesting year-end lists:
E-cyclopedia’s Glossary of 2003
Many of the defining moments of 2003 spawned their own words and phrases. The BBC has a list of the new “words behind the headlines” that were either introduced, popularized, or changed in meaning over the past year.
A metalist of lists: Links to more than 150 end of year lists, organized into categories such as tech, books, music, film, people and so on.
Search Headlines
NOTE: Article links often change. In case of a bad link, use the publication’s search facility, which most have, and search for the headline.
