Yahoo announced their top searches of 2006. It’s either an interesting look into pop culture fascination or a disgraceful display of apathy and bad taste. For instance, “Anna Nicole’s son dies” beat out “Iraq” and “U.S. Elections” in the Top Ten New Stories Search category. Yikes.

Most surprising (to me) is that “WWE” is listed at number two in the Top Ten Overall Searches category. Pro wrestling?! I knew it was wildly popular, but it’s not even on a major network.

The Top Ten Blog/Blogger Searches feature a mix of celebrity and political blogs (“Perez Hilton”, “Little Green Footballs”). No surprise there.

The list also includes some more pointless categories like Top Ten Celebrity Baby Searches and Top Ten Song Lyric Searches. “Hips Don’t Lie” topped that list, beating out “My Humps” and “Grillz”. For real? I change my mind. That’s more surprising than the pro wrestling result.

So what should you take away from these lists? How can your organization make the top ten? Clearly it’s time to add more Britney Spears gossip and WWE analysis to your site.

Just kidding.


Written by

Fred Simmons

As a Managing Partner and the Director of User Experience at Gulo, Fred enjoys making website interactions more natural and improving UX design. Outside of work, Fred enjoys golf, BBQ, craft beer, movies where the bad guy wins, comma-separated lists, and talking about himself in the third person.