Hitwise recently released their "Top US Search Lists of 2006." This list gives us a different perspective compared to other lists concerning what Web users were interested about last year.
For 2006, "myspace" was the top search term with a 0.63% share. Second was "myspace.com" with a 0.41% share, while "ebay" was third with 0.33%.
"Yahoo," "mapquest," "www.myspace.com," "yahoo.com," "my space," "myspace layouts," and "lyrics" rounded out the top 10.
There are two things to note about this list:
1. MySpace owns it. It’s pretty remarkable to see just how pervasive MySpace is to the collective mindset of Web users in the U.S. To see that the social networking behemoth takes up half of the top 10 search terms of 2006 is a pretty big feat, and says a lot about the influence and pull that the site has, even outside of the big numbers it posts in terms of viewership and membership.
2. The common Web user in the U.S. seems to need a simple lesson in navigating the Internet. The fact of the matter is that a part of what this list conveys is that Web users are frequently typing in Web site names (and even the actual URL sometimes) into search boxes. This is a bit baffling, since one would think that Web users would be a bit keener to the idea of using the address bar to go to sites whose URLs are already known instead of making more work for themselves by typing it out into a search engine and then clicking on the result. One can only guess at why this is.
"American idol" was the top search term for the Television Category, and "old navy" was the top term for the Fashion Category in 2006.
This list is a different take compared to other popular lists released by the major search engines, but it’s interesting to look at nonetheless.
Source:
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1004513
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