Social Network Sites Top Google Search in '06

Social networking sites, Bebo.com and MySpace have topped terms, searched by Internet users, on Google. Paris Hilton and Hezbollah were the other two, most-searched items in news, while popular movie character, Borat and FIFA World Cup followed closely.

According to the list of popular search terms and the items that have shown the fastest growth, the top 10 searches were found to be dominated by web 2.0 developments, such as video site Metacafe, music streaming service Radioblog and online encyclopedia Wikipedia. The list also revealed that Internet surfers were more curious about Nicole Kidman's wedding than that of her former husband Tom Cruise's wedding with Katie Holmes, while singer Paul McCartney's divorce attracted more attention than Britney Spears'.

The top news searches of 2006 were dominated by celebrity, illness, tragedy and the bizarre, while In the "How to" section, web users wanted to learn how to refinance, set up a Wiki page, drift, podcast, scream and even levitate!

The word 'video' was the seventh most searched of 2006, reflecting growth in services such as YouTube and MetaCafe, and offerings from Google, Yahoo and MSN.

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