Tech Central: Porn site creeps into Google zeitgeist

Google has published its annual round-up of most searched terms today, revealing that the public spent much of the year procrastinating on Facebook, energised by the Large Hadron Collider and obsessing about the downfall of a bank in Iceland.

Each year the search engine giant compiles its “zeitgeist” list, uncovering the most popular keywords among billions of Google queries.

One of the fastest rising search terms of 2008 was “Large Hadron Collider”, reflecting the way in which the giant atom-smasher that promises to reveal the secrets of the universe captured the public imagination as it was switched on in September.

In the UK, "Large Hadron Collider" outranked even “Obama”, despite the American Presidential election's domination of the airwaves and front pages for weeks before his election win on November 4.

Globally, the president-elect was beaten by his vanquished rival for the vice-presidency, Sarah Palin. The Governor of Alaska topped the the worldwide list of fastest rising queries. Mr Obama was only sixth in the list of top climbers, just behind the late Heath Ledger, who played the Joker in the latest Batman remake. He died in January after taking an overdose of prescription drugs.

The economic crisis led to a rise in searches for Icesave, the Icelandic bank whose collapse led to the British Government compensating thousands of customers who faced losing their savings. Icesave, the online British arm of Landsbanki, was the fastest rising finance term this year, higher than Natwest, Halifax or Barclays.

Unsuprisingly, the word most frequently searched for was Facebook, the social networking website. In the UK there are 12.6 million active users — about a third of the online population.

Other popular websites dominate the list of top search terms, such as YouTube, the world’s largest video-sharing website, and eBay the popular online auction site. The fastest rising term in UK searches was iPlayer, the BBC on-demand service, which in its first year was viewed 237 million times.

As this article is loaded with popular search terms, The Times fully expects that this piece may be heading the top of the results from one of your Google searches very soon.

Top UK search terms

1. Facebook
2. BBC
3. YouTube
4. eBay
5. games
6. news
7. Hotmail
8. Bebo
9. Yahoo
10. jobs

Fastest rising UK search terms

1. iPlayer
2. Facebook
3. iPhone
4. YouTube
5. Yahoo Mail
6. Large Hadron Collider
7. Obama
8. Friv
9. Cam4
10. Jogos

Fastest rising global search terms

1. Sarah Palin
2. Beijing 2008
3. Facebook login
4. Tuenti
5. Heath Ledger
6. Obama
7. Nasza Klasa
8. Wer Kennt Wen
9. Euro 2008
10. Jonas brothers

Explore Tech & Web

• Personal Tech

• The Web

• Gadgets & Gaming