The NewsDemon Blog

First out of the veritable search engine gates this year, Bing has posted its top searches for 2009. Each year, the big three give us a reveal on what most of us have been looking for all year long.

Here are 2009 top search results from Bing:

1) Michael Jackson - No surprise that the death of the one glove entertainment goliath topped the list.

2) Twitter – The USENET inspired service gained a curious look by many this year – few REAL people joined.

3) Swine Flu – Achoo.

4) Stock Market – Achoo.

5) Farrah Fawcett – Charlie lost an angel this year.

6) Patrick Swayze – Although Ghost and Dirty Dancing brought him fame, he earned the online world respect early with Road House.

7) Cash for Clunkers – A government incentive program to encourage US citizens to purchase foreign cars.

8) Jon and Kate Gosselin – Talk of divorce clogged both the interwebs as well as many USENET newsgroups for the reality television couple with 100 kids.

9) Billy Mays – But wait, there’s one more:

10) Jaycee Dugard – Kidnapped as a child, Jaycee was discovered alive after 18 years from her disappearance, also with a child.

The search trends tend to coincide with the popularity of these topics on newsgroups. Each of these top 10 either have a dedicated newsgroup to the matter or at the very least – a newsgroup related to the topic.

According to Bing, other searches were prominent this year:

“Not surprisingly, we saw a lot of folks using Bing for quick access to favorite sites like Facebook, MSN, Youtube and Craigslist. 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.”

Separate from “Top Trending Topics”, the most popular searches is a general category of search terms that gained the most interest. Top Trending Topics is another list compiled by Bing which mostly covers celebrities. This year, the top three were Megan Fox, Robert Pattinson and holding in at number one – Perez Hilton.

Google has its own trends section will allow users to see real time results on popular searches. Yahoo and Google both are expected to have their own 2009 top 10 searches coming out soon.  The Bing results are only gathered from US results and do not include a UK edition. To find out more, many Microsoft and search engine newsgroups provide discussion groups on the matter.

UPDATE:

Google and Yahoo have both released their top 10 results. In each, Michael Jackson takes hold of the charts in each. However, looking closely at the rest is where all the similarities apparently end:

Google

1. michael jackson
2. facebook
3. tuenti
4. twitter
5. sanalika
6. new moon
7. lady gaga
8. windows 7
9. dantri.com.vn
10. torpedo gratis

Yahoo

1) Michael Jackson

2) The Twilight Saga

3) WWE

4) Megan Fox

5) Britney Spears

6) Naruto

7) American Idol

8) Kim Kardashian

9) NASCAR

10) Runescape