Google Blog Explaining 2006 Zeitgeist Lists

Last month, Google Blog explained how the lists of 2006 top searches on Google were retrieved.

We do not simply retrieve the most frequently-searched terms for the period - the truth is, they don’t change that much from year to year. This list would be predominated by very generic searches, such as ebay, dictionary, yellow pages, games, maps.

To come up with this list, we looked at several thousand of 2006’s most popular searches, and ranked them based on how much their popularity increased compared to 2005. Our “what is” and “who is” lists are not necessarily the absolute most frequent searches, but rather those that best represent the passing year.

Google.com - Top Searches in 2006

1. bebo
2. myspace
3. world cup
4. metacafe
5. radioblog
6. wikipedia
7. video
8. rebelde
9. mininova
10. wiki

Google News - Top Searches in 2006

1. paris hilton
2. orlando bloom
3. cancer
4. podcasting
5. hurricane katrina
6. bankruptcy
7. martina hingis
8. autism
9. 2006 nfl draft
10. celebrity big brother 2006

Within the 2006 Year-End Google Zeitgeist lists, there are lists that consist of the following words in the search queries: