AOL and Lycos recently announced results of top searches carried out by their visitors for 2006.
Just what are America's Internet users looking for? In a word, “celebrities”.
Paris Hilton ranked as the number 1 search for AOL users. Over at Lycos, the most frequently searched for celeb was Clay Aiken.
However in 2006, for Lycos surfers the top search wasn't a person, but the online gambling phenomenon poker. Lycos commented that "Search activity for poker has been steadily climbing since it made its first appearance on the 2004 year-end list at number 10," Lycos also said that searches for poker had climbed over 425 percent in the last 12 months..
In other search metrics, the top news story for AOL was gas prices. For Lycos it was the Iraq war.
Conspicuous by their absence were computer and high-tech searches. The most popular in that category was iPod for an AOL Search. Over at Lycos the iPod was the fourth most-searched of 2006, ranking behind poker, MySpace, and RuneScape.
