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Web Zeitgeist

An anonymous reader writes "CNN has a story about Lycos and its 50 top "searched for" items of the year. After excluding "sex", "Dragonball" was #1, followed by "Kazaa", "tattoos", "Britney Spears", and the "NFL" (american football) rounding out the top 5. IRS was #7, and taxes acheived #14. "The Bible" is #21 followed by "Marijuana" at #22. It appears that pop-stars, supermodels, computer games, sports, and september 11th related words heavily dominate the rest of the top 100. How about the biggest declines? Boy bands. nSync down from 36 to 163, and Back Street Boys tumble to 250 from 58. Lycos is hosting the top 100 results this year here with some commentary. Google also has their own comprehensive lists (and cool charts) as well."

35 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. Wait a second by enos · · Score: 4, Funny

    You mean to tell me that dragonball has nothing to do with sex?

    --
    boldly going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse
  2. Hurry! We can still influence the 2002 results! by dagg · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Let's vote for a word or phrase and try to get it added to the 2002 results. I vote for: this.

    If all goes well... we should see something like this:

    December 15th, 2002: slashdot user calls on the world to search for the word insert word here so as to manipulate the 2002 Zeitgeist results
    --
    Sex - Find It
  3. Hmm... Spears included? by mojotek · · Score: 4, Funny

    I would have shlopped Britney in there with the sex searches... There's no way she's number 4 without the slashdot crowd's celebrity nude searches.

  4. Question by bayankaran · · Score: 4, Funny

    CNN has a story about Lycos and its 50 top "searched for items of the year.

    Wow, are there people searching using Lycos?

    --
    Tat Tvam Asi
  5. Dragonball processor by Denito · · Score: 5, Funny


    Wow, the world is much geekier than i thought.

    however, when I want info about dragonball, I normally just search for '68000'.

  6. Woe as me by sx10 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's a pretty sad state of affairs when spiderman and shakira are the most pressing issues people want to research on the internet.

    1. Re:Woe as me by hdparm · · Score: 3, Insightful
      You are absolutelly right.

      Statistics like this one tell us something, don't they? Average human being is mediocre who has very little interest in anything beyond basic needs and fun/amusement. People who realise this are able to communicate with masses, get their agenda out there and capitalise on it in various ways.

      No wonder entertainment corporations make shitloads of money each and every year and fundamentalists of all flavours have so much followers - to name just a few consequences.

    2. Re:Woe as me by TeddyR · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Think of who the driving forces on the internet are today.... excluding the sex factor (which actually is relevant...) the major "new" influx of people on the internet are the 12-22 year olds that take their broadband access for granted.

      There are millions of college students who are entering "wired" dorms and campuses that give them huge amounts of bandwidth to download stuff... so their interests would definitly show up as a factor in the results...

      --

      --
      Time is on my side
  7. Who cares by TheOnlyCoolTim · · Score: 4, Funny

    The real news to me in this story is that Lycos still exists.

    Tim

    --
    Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
  8. Thank God For Google by Ignorant+Aardvark · · Score: 3, Funny

    Seeing as how sex is #1, I'm glad that Google isn't giving up the huge amount of advertising bucks they're making by including ads from porn sites.

  9. from the Lycos FAQ... by updog · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Prurient Content: We ignore pornographic, four-letter words and otherwise lewd queries, including names of decidedly adult film stars--unless such terms are driven by news events.

    I think these types of searches would actually be more interesting to see categorized than the others. What sick and twisted things are people searching for? I wonder if this is categorized anywhere?

    1. Re:from the Lycos FAQ... by jesser · · Score: 5, Interesting

      What sick and twisted things are people searching for?

      Disturbing Search Requests: what blog owners find when looking through referrers in web server logs. These tend to be several-word searches, because single-word searches wouldn't take you to a random blog. Examples: "How to suck breasts", "build a giant robot", "cuntless otters", "worlds greatest asshole".

      Google Adwords Keyword Suggestions: type a search term, and it will give common multiple-word searches that include your term. If you type in "porn", the multiple-word searches are child porn, free porn, kiddie porn, chill porn, cartoon porn, porn stars, gay porn, kid porn, lego porn, sex porn, porn nude, moose porn, and lesbian porn.

      Keyword City: 10 most popular search words for the Sex & Pornography category. I don't know how reliable this site is. The top 10 are babe, sex, porn, hardcore, nude, xxx, anal, nudist, naked, and boob.

      Metaspy Exposed: random searches on the Metacrawler search engine in real time. Because these are random, you may have to reload several times before you'll see any porn searches.

      --
      The shareholder is always right.
  10. A side note by ealar+dlanvuli · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Also to be noted in the google stats is Mac's broke 5% of the total searches for the first time since google started publishing stats. They omitted this from the year end results, but if you check the archives you can see this.

    --
    I live in a giant bucket.
  11. great...just great... by CySurflex · · Score: 5, Funny

    I worked hard ALL year to get "Wild Donkey Bestialty Porn" to the top 10 search terms, only to have CNN factor it OUT of the statistics.

  12. What google neglected to mention... by Morgahastu · · Score: 5, Funny

    What google neglected to mention was the words the top search words were teamed up with: ...

    2. "shakira" with "will compiling my own kernel get me ass like that"

    3. "winter olympics" with "I can see your privates through that luge outfit" ...

    5. "avril lavigne" with "what if i am attracted to a singer that looks like my daughter"

    6. "star wars" with "askjeeves: will the next one suck?"

    7. "eminem" with "hyprocritical dirty white skinny guy"

    8. "american idol" with "please god kill me I watched it " ...

    11. "natalie portman" with "candid nipple pics" ...

    13. "trillian" with "when will this actually work properly" ...

    15. "neverwinter nights" with "linux client when ??" ...

    20. "ikea" with "crazy swedes"

    1. Re:What google neglected to mention... by jfedor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      BTW, this is offtopic, but Mr. Malda recently mentioned in a Journal comment that Slashdot has too many "+5, Funny" comments. I agree with this sentiment,

      Why don't you just set the Reason Modifier in your preferences accordingly.

      Oh, I know. You'd have to log in to do that.

      -jfedor

    2. Re:What google neglected to mention... by orthogonal · · Score: 5, Funny

      Don't forget that many people in the tech industry are women, and we do not appreciate schoolby attempts at humor.

      -jen


      Me: "How many tech industry women does it take to change a light bulb?"

      jen (shrilly): "That's NOT funny!"

  13. Ask Jeeves by jesser · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ask Jeeves also posted year-end search trends, but it picked different information to highlight than either Lycos or Google.

    Yearly: frequent searches, news-related searches, health, CEO scandals, music artists, vacation destinations, products and brands.

    For each of the top 5 news stories, the year-end page includes several popular questions related to the news. For example:

    2. September 11th Memorial
    -- How many people died on September 11, 2001?
    -- Is 9-11 a holiday?
    -- What events are taking place on September 11, 2002?

    Weekly: frequent searches, general advancing queries, movies, and news.

    Some of the advancing queries are questions ("What is Kwanzaa?") and some are searches ("Saint Nicholas"), but I don't know whether that difference reflects actual differences in the way people search on aj.com for different types of information.

    --
    The shareholder is always right.
  14. Linux more popular than Microsoft by updog · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is kinda interesting, although I've seen this before. Heh, FTP is more popular that Microsoft too :) I wonder if this type of thing scares Microsoft... Google Top Technology Searches: 1. mp3 2. sms 3. winzip 4. linux 5. ftp 6. dell 7. xbox 8. realplayer 9. microsoft 10. java

    1. Re:Linux more popular than Microsoft by Pfhreakaz0id · · Score: 4, Informative

      just fyi, I didn't know 'til recently, google has a specialized Microsoft search engine www.google.com/microsoft. works pretty well. beats searching the kb from MSDN and it indexes non microsoft sites as well.

  15. Over 30 comments posted... by Malfourmed · · Score: 3, Interesting
    ... and no mention that linux (at #4) outranks microsoft (at #9) on the google technology top 10 list?

    Or is this old news?

  16. all your google by cheese_wallet · · Score: 3, Funny

    According to google's zeitgeist shtick, here , the ever wonderful "all your base are belong to us" is in the top twenty declining queries for 2002.

    Maybe this cycle of "all your xxx" is finally coming to a close.

  17. Re:from the Lycos FAQ...Media Distortion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Prurient Content: We ignore pornographic, four-letter words and otherwise lewd queries, including names of decidedly adult film stars--unless such terms are driven by news events.

    Why? Sexual content is no less valid than any other form of expression. It's obviously popular -- why isn't it represented equally in the study?

    It's an obvious form of media bias -- a slur against the so-called "adult" industry. It's hipocracy -- children can see guns and violence at an early age, but people without clothes, or worse, humans having sex is "bad" for them.

    I decry this media bias. It's clearly a conspiracy by the Storks and their Baby Delivery Monopoly.
    --
    AC

  18. Interesting by Z0mb1eman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Interesting that Prom Dresses (39) is followed directly by Anorexia (40).

    Coincidence?

    Probably.

    --
    ClutterMe.com - easiest site creation on the Net. Just click and type.
  19. Room at the top. by DoraLives · · Score: 5, Funny

    How about the biggest declines? Boy bands. nSync down from 36 to 163, and Back Street Boys tumble to 250 from 58.

    While this might look like good news, it's not. It only means that cultural space is being made for even stupider things.

    --
    Is it fascism yet?
  20. Chu Mei-Feng at #20 by The+Moving+Shadow · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They can't really explain it properly on Lycos, but Taiwanese politician Chu Mei-Feng was ranked #20 on the Lycos search charts over the last year. Personally i have never heard of him, and i think the majority of the non asian people here too. Makes you figure how much asian sites and users make up the whole of the internet while we (read: I) surf only those pages with our western fonts.

  21. Re:People who think in bbcode can bite my ass by netsharc · · Score: 3, Funny

    that's some lame markup language that a certain PHP forum system has, which supposedly makes it easier to insert tags, but it's just like HTML.

    But it does have it benefits. With that, you can disable HTML but this limited language is parsable to (non-annoying) HTML.

    --
    What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
  22. Completely incomplete without porn. by NineNine · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I hate to say it, but this is completely useless since they stripped out anything objectionable. I didn't see porn or sex or anything relating to sex on there at all. This is like the "sanitized for TV" version of the stats, which in my mind, aren't really stats at all.

  23. Re:Am I out of touch...? by MonTemplar · · Score: 3, Informative
    Yep, they're all music-related, to varying degrees of talent (and in Shakira's case, a tenuous grip on the English language to boot!)

    Gareth Gates is the bloke who didn't win the UK's Pop Idol contest, but will probably outlast the winner, Will Young, by dint of having
    1. A decent singing voice.
    2. Not being gay, hence twice the potential audience.
    3. Having a discernable personality.

    As for Las Ketchup, all I know is that I've somehow managed to avoid hearing this all year long. But I bet that if you play it backwards you get Osama Bin Laden saying 'Ha Ha Ha! Ya Missed Me!' :)

    MT.
    --
    -MT.
  24. What about google? by autopr0n · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You know its weird, google has so much more traffic then Lycos, and they are the ones who coined the term 'Zeitgeist' to refer to perotic web-search stats reports. (I.e the 'Google Zeitgeist'). In fact, Google just released their Zeitgeist for 2k2 a couple days ago, but I've been seeing the Lycos thing all over the place.

    I guess Terra-Lycos, being a true media company rather then search-only knows how to play the PR game better. Ah well.

    Ah well. Typing the term 'zeitgeist' over and over has really messed with my head...

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
  25. What about internet2? by TeddyR · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What about sites that are located in internet2. Wasnt that supposed have been created by the major research universities as a result of the commercialism of the "Regular" internet?

    http://www.internet2.edu/

    Many universities now have their own internal search engines that their students connect to... Many of those searches are not factored in these results either.

    Many users go directly to their most used sites like cnn.com or espn.com and search for what they want there. Those results may not be factored in to the google or lycos results...

    Then comes places like AOL that still have millions of users that do searches from within the AOL client which are not factored in either...

    --

    --
    Time is on my side
  26. Hahah by autopr0n · · Score: 5, Informative

    Chu Mei-Feng isn't a guy, it's a woman. A taiwanese Politictian who had a huge sex scandal in Taiwan.

    Basically she was the 'girlfriend' you could say of a high-ranking politico who helped her get into the equivalent of congress. (most Americans would have balked, at this point, but in Taiwan it was kosher)

    Anyway, he got her a house, and she got lonely so she invited a friend to live with her. Except, her friend ended up putting video cameras in her bedroom and recorded her having sex with lots of different guys. Then released the VCDs.

    So, when people searched for "Chu Mei-Feng" they weren't looking for info on the Taiwan-China relations (CMF was pro-unification, fyi), but rather they were looking for .mpg files of her getting fucked.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
  27. Doh by Tachys · · Score: 3, Funny

    You just had to mention Dragonball

    "Let the fun begin Majin Buu"

    "Heh heh heh heh heh heh"

    "This can't be happening"

    "Buu go Bang Bang"

    "We have got to stop them"

    "Ready!"

    "Yes"

    "HAH"

    "Stay with it"

    "Buu not scared"

    "Let's take it to the next level"

    "Looks like our friend is in need of a haircut"

    I guess this proves I have no life, even by slashdot standards

  28. Re:who use lycos ? aliens ? by TheOnlyCoolTim · · Score: 3, Funny

    I work in a children's library, which means that a lot of kids who are too poor to have internet at home come in to use ours. * A LOT * of them just search for Dragonball Z. Which means:

    1.) I get bombarded with requests for how to spell strange names that sound like "Gokugeeta".

    2.) These kids get pissed when the crapass websites they go to eventually open enough popups that the computer gives up and freezes.

    Tim

    --
    Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
  29. Slashdot version? by alfredw · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Just a thought on a cool Slashcode idea... Track trends on /.! The google graph for the "Las Ketchup" craze has inspired me... Could we track the first occurances, and subsequent uptake/getting-oldness of various /. trends? The first "first post!!!", the height of goatse-ism, the birth of "IN SOVIET RUSSIA"?

    I'd be amused :-)

    --
    In Soviet Russia, sig types you!