End-of-the-Year Search Trends Bullshit

Britney Spears rules again - this is the conclusion from Yahoo's Top Searches list of 2007.

Britney spears was at the top of many search lists in the last few years. It's really hard to believe that in an ever changing, dynamic world such as the internet, something like that stays so stable. This is Yahoo's list:

1. Britney Spears
2. WWE
3. Paris Hilton
4. Naruto
5. Beyonce
6. Lindsay Lohan
7. Rune Scape
8. Fantasy Football
9. Fergie
10. Jessica Alba

You can dig deeper, if you feel like it, and look at Yahoo's Search Trends for 2007.

These lists represent almost nothing at all, because they are edited and mutated by the editors of the sites that offer them. Last year, Google published a VERY weird top searches list for 2006, and after a lot of bashing and criticism, was forced to admit that the list was heavily edited and basically didn't reflect any trends at all. I suppose that's why Google stopped publishing their Zeitgeist, and moved to the more flexible, web 2.0-style of Google Trends.

Yahoo says that they remove sexual queries and navigational queries - and the list is compiled by some sort of formula they conjure.

These lists serve no one but the PR of the specific site that publishes them. They are almost meaningless. The real data of searches is very interesting, but also very valuable. That's why we will never see it - but only the distorted image the big search engine choose to project.