Outstanding in their search fields

By Rachel Leibrock Published 2:15 am PST Tuesday, January 4, 2005

What's in your search-engine field?

If you're like the rest of America, chances are you conducted an online search for Britney Spears or Paris Hilton at some point during 2004.
So says the year-end Top 10 query lists provided by three of the leading Internet search engines: Google, Yahoo! Search and Lycos.
Queries about Spears and Hilton were the only ones to make all three lists - Paris, the prolific heiress, ranked No. 2 on each - proving that even in a year rife with elections, natural disasters and a Super Bowl halftime exposé, Web surfers still prefer blondes.
"This year it was all about pop culture and blondes - Paris and Britney and Jessica (Simpson) were all big movers," says Yahoo! Search spokeswoman Nancy Evars, on the phone from Sunnyvale.
In contrast, Janet Jackson made only one year-end Top 10 list - but at least she hit that with a scandal-worthy bang by crowning the Lycos chart. ("American Idol" topped Yahoo's list and Spears took the honors for Google.)
Elsewhere, Web crawlers were interested in Jackson, Evars explains, but mostly for just about as long as it took for Justin Timberlake to rip away her costume in February's now-infamous "wardrobe malfunction."
"Jackson was actually the top-searched (Yahoo) mover in February, but if you look at the whole year, she didn't sustain that same level of interest," Evars says.
Instead, searchers spent time digging up info on poker (Lycos), the NBA (Yahoo! Search) and hunk-a-licious actor Orlando Bloom (Lycos). According to Evars, it was also a big year for everything "geeky" - with users typing in search requests for video games, MP3s, "Harry Potter" and "Lord of the Rings."
Awards shows were another subject of interest, Evars says. The Academy Awards in January proved to be a hot topic, while former President Ronald Reagan's June death was eclipsed by searches for the "2004 MTV Movie Awards."
The last 12 months also saw changes in the way we scoured the Internet: Search terms became increasingly more specific ("Paris Hilton + Simple Life" vs. just "Paris Hilton") and sophisticated, Evars says.