Baby, One More Time

Britney was the hottest woman on the Internet for the fourth year in a row, according to the Lycos 50.

No surprise there, but debuting at number 4 is the Lycos 50 all-time strangest entry, Chu Mei-Feng, who made the list despite almost no interest from searchers in the United States.

That's right, searches originating from Southeast Asian countries were sufficient in number to catapult the Taiwanese politician from obscurity to number 1.

On Monday, Lycos will be publishing its 2002 top 10.

Comments

Great link, scrivener. Actually, I'd heard and read quite a bit about the Chu Mei-Feng debacle... but that's only because where I work, the events in Southeast Asia are more closely studied than those in our own backyard.

I was fascinated to read that it was interest outside Taiwan that did the heavy lifting. Queries from the very country where the scandal erupted accounted for about 1 percent of the queries Lycos received!

I like Google's presentation if its top queries of the year: Year-End Google Zeitgeist 2001. Their weekly reports are linked to the right here at HawaiiStories.

Update! The Google Zeitgeist 2002 is online! Also check out the year-long "timeline," graphically tracking the leading search terms month by month.

Winners this year? Eminem, Jennifer Lopez, David Beckham, The Simpsons and (oddly complementary) The Sims.

They also have top search queries by country. They helpfully translate the Japanese ones: Otoha, Yui Ichikawa, Haruka Igawa...

Oh yeah, and of course there's the topic that started this thread. The Top 100 from Lycos ("The Web's Most Wanted") is also available now.

Dragonball (holding on to its top spot from last year), Kazaa (zooming up from 64th place), Tattoos (climbing from fourth place), Britney Spears (falling from second place), Morpheus (jumping from 21st place), NFL (up from 16th place), and IRS (down one from sixth place).

Lycos is also doing a number of special lists, from top movies to top women. Nifty!

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