The Most Searched For Terms of 2009

Experian Hitwise announced that it has found Facebook to be the top search term overall for the year 2009 after analyzing the top 300 search terms for the year. This is the first year Facebook has been the top search term, and it accounted for 0.67% of all searches, according to the research firm.

Variations of the term Facebook actually accounted for four of the top twenty-five terms, the firm says. "Facebook" itself moved up from the 10th spot in 2008 to the top spot in 2009.

Although MySpace has taken a lot of flack in recent memory, as Facebook has gained popularity, MySpace was still the second most-searched term in 2009, according to Experian Hitwise. It had been the top term for the previous three years.

Following MySpace on the list was Craigslist, YouTube, and Yahoo Mail. "Analysis of the search terms reveals that social networking–related terms dominated the results, accounting for 2.48 percent of the top 300 searches," a representative for Experian Hitwise tells WebProNews. 

"Adding up common search terms — e.g., facebook and facebook.com — Facebook terms accounted for 1.09 percent of all US searches," he says. "MySpace terms accounted for 1.02 percent, Yahoo terms accounted for 0.95 percent, Google terms accounted for 0.63 percent, and Craigslist terms accounted for 0.62 percent."

Google was unsurprisingly the top-visited website for the second straight year, accounting for 6.7% of all U.S. visits between January and November 2009, according to Experian Hitwise. Yahoo Mail accounted for 4.44% of visits, followed by Facebook (4.26%), Yahoo (3.36%) and MySpace (3%).

"Adding up common properties — e.g., yahoo.com and mail.yahoo.com — Yahoo! properties accounted for 10.60 percent of all U.S. visits," the representative says. "Google properties accounted for 9.93 percent, and Facebook properties accounted for 4.26 percent. The top 50 Websites accounted for 39 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2009."

As the landscape of the social media industry continues to change, it will be quite interesting to see how these results stack up to next year's. It will be particularly interesting to see how MySpace and Yahoo fare.

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Death, Disease, Money, and Twitter on Bing

Microsoft's Bing has revealed a top ten list of the most popular trending topics of 2009. To determine these, Bing analyzed billions of search queries and developed the list based on searches made with the Bing search (I mean decision) engine.

"Not surprisingly, we saw a lot of folks using Bing for quick access to favorite sites like Facebook, MSN, Youtube and Craigslist," says Bing Geneal Manager Danielle Tiedt. "We also saw a lot of more complex searches such as product related queries in which people used Bing to help decide what MP3 player to buy and travel searches to help find the best deals on a tropical vacation."

Here is the list Bing came up with:

1. Michael Jackson
2. Twitter
3. Swine Flu
4. Stock Market
5. Farrah Fawcett
6. Patrick Swayze
7. Cash for Clunkers
8. Jon and Kate Gosselin
9. Billy Mays
10. Jaycee Dugard

As you can see, dead celebrities took a lot of searchers' time this year (and there certainly were a lot to pass away in '09). It is no surprise that Twitter was high on the list. It has been a huge year for the company. With H1N1 and the economy dominating the news for much of the year, it is also unsurpsing to see terms like "swine flu," "stock market," and "cash for clunkers" on the list.

As a bonus, Bing provided a "sneak peek" at the top celebrity searches on Bing in 2009. The top three were Perez Hilton, followed by Robert Pattinson, and Megan Fox.


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Craigslist Substantially Expands its Reach

Craigslist has reportedly expanded the number of cities it offers its service in by a whopping 25%. Brad Stone with the New York Times claims to have been alerted by a spokesperson with the company on the matter.

Apparently Craiglist has added 140 new cities, including 87 in the United States, 8 in Canada, and 45 in non-North American countries.

"Among the targeted areas in the United States are dozens of small to midsize cities like Susanville, Calif. (population 18,000), Oneonta, N.Y. (13,000), and the counties of Okaloosa and Walton, Fla. (a combined 229,000.)," says Stone. "If that expansion sounds minor, consider that Craigslist also added new sites for international cities like Lucknow, India (population 2.5 million), Shenzhen, China (14 million), and New Castle, Australia, (280,000)."

Craigslist is expected to update the company's official fact sheet to list all of the included cities by the end of the month. There is not mention of the news on the company's official blog.

Most of the new sites are English-language only. According to Craigslist, over 50 million people in the US alone use the site. The company also claims to get over 20 billion page views per month. With an added 25% of global coverage, I would imagine it will get a nice boost in that department.

comScore: Twitter’s Growth Continued In June

Arguments concerning Twitter's growth are more common than ever, but Twitter hasn't topped out yet, at least.  A new report from comScore indicates that the site managed to attract about 19 percent more unique visitors in June than in May. 

Here's some additional good news for fans of Twitter: if you look back to June of 2008, the site's growth rate is an astounding 1,460 percent.  Also, Erick Schonfeld writes, "ComScore now counts it as the No. 52 largest site in the world (bigger than ESPN, just shy of the BBC and Craigslist)."

That's a noteworthy stack of statistics.

Unfortunately for Twitter, there are a few other things to take into consideration.  For example: the deaths of Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays, and Ed McMahon all occurred in June, and generated tons of chatter.  A month-over-month bump of 19 percent seems a little small considering the circumstances.

Then there's the report indicating that Twitter received $48 million in free media coverage during late May and most of June to take into account.  And really, a 19 percent month-over-month bump isn't especially huge, regardless.

Let the arguments over Twitter's popularity continue, then.