‘Sarah Palin’ the most searched query on Google

11 Dec 2008

In its annual zeitgeist of terms most queried on its search engine, Google has revealed ‘Sarah Palin’ to be one of the fastest-rising globally, while the Irish are mostly interested in Bebo.

Bebo was the most popular web search in 2008, while Facebook was the fastest rising search. Interestingly, one of the fastest-rising global searches was ‘nasza klasa’, a Polish social-networking site, which was also a fast-rising search in Ireland.

Web-based email services were the next most popular searches with Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo! all ranking highly.

Our interest in news and current affairs remains strong in 2008 with the Lisbon Treaty and the US presidential election dominating. Nicholas Sarkozy and George Bush were the most popular politicians searched, followed by Irish politicians Mary Harney and Brian Cowen. Perhaps worryingly, none of the opposition politicians generated enough volume to register on the zeitgeist.

Our love of going out and enjoying ourselves is obvious, despite the recession. We continue to see high volume of searches for concert tickets and restaurants, while our tradition of singing is reflected in the search for lyrics on Google.

Singing their way through the recession are Dublin, Waterford, Mayo, Louth, Limerick, Cork, Galway, Laois, Carlow, and Donegal, which all register on Zeitgeist for song lyrics.

But we are also fond of looking for a bargain, searching for cheap holidays, flights and hotels. And it was Donegal and not Cavan which showed the highest volume of searches for ‘cheap’.

In a very telling take on the economy, searches for new cars have fallen by 75pc since the start of the year, with Cork topping the region with most searches for ‘new cars’, while Louth topped the search for used cars. Searches for used cars from Northern Ireland were among the fastest-rising search terms in this category in 2008.

According to the Google zeitgeist, the most popular search queries were:

Fastest Rising (Global)

Sarah Palin

Beijing 2008

facebook login

tuenti

heath ledger

obama

nasza klasa 

wer kennt wen

euro 2008

jonas brothers

 

Fastest Rising Ireland

Facebook

utube

google maps

Youtube

Nasza klasa

Wiki

RTE

Maps

Irish Times

Yahoo! mail

 

Most Popular Ireland

Bebo

Youtube

Hotmail

Yahoo

Google

Games

You tube

News

Map

gmail

 

Politicians (Most Popular – Ireland)

Nicolas Sarkozy

George Bush

Mary Harney

Brian Cowen

Declan Ganley

Bertie Ahern

Barack Obama

John McCain

Hilary Clinton

Sarah Palin

 

Tickets

Oasis

Munster rugby

Westlife

Kings of Leon

The Killers

Top Gear

Heineken cup

Take That

Bruce Springsteen   

 

Restaurants

Dublin Restaurants

Cork Restaurants

Restaurants London

Italian Restaurants

Galway Restaurants

Michelin Restaurants

Indian Restaurants

Cheap

Flights

Hotels

Holidays

Laptops

Lyrics

Song Lyrics

You tube

Music Lyrics

With you lyrics

Rhianna

Galway Girl

Kings of Leon

 

By John Kennedy

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com