Although Google is the only existing search engine as far as I am concerned yet other search engines like Yahoo! search, Bing and Ask.com do hold ‘little’ market share in this one sided market which has been captured by Google. The year 2009 is about to pass by and it is time when bloggers around the world start jotting down the jist of whatever was ‘hot’ for the past 1 year. I am no different! To start with, here goes the summary of the popular search keywords which made to the top list of various search engines.

Ask.com’s ‘Top Questions for 2009

On a different note, Ask.com has released the top questions that were searched in their search engine during the year 2009. Some of these are similar to the usual popular search keywords that are regularly searched by Internet users while some are quite crazy too! Though ‘Michael Jackson’ seems to be the most popular search keyword for most of the search engines, here in case of Ask.com the legend could not be a part of toppers list. Just to console the soul of the ultra famous Jackson Ask.com has listed the question “Who is the father of Michael Jackson’s children?” as part of the top 10 list.

Other usual questions that made to toppers list were “How much should I weigh?”, “How do I get pregnant?” and “How do I get out of debt fast?”. Other then these some of the weird search questions were “What is Miley Cyrus’s phone number?” and “What is twitter?”. Quite tricky questions, eh?

Ask has also compiled list of top 10 questions for various categories like beauty, traveling, personal finance and pets etc. I couldn’t resist listing some of the questions that have made to the top of various sections. Have a look at them, enjoy reading them, and use them in your blog so as to hit the top of the ask’s search result pages.

• How much should you tip a hairdresser?
• Why do cats purr?
• Can dogs take asprin?
• Which came first the chicken or the egg?
• What is the best way to pack a suitcase?

Bing’s popular search keywords for the year 2009

The popular search keywords within Bing were the usual ones with Michael Jackson topping the list. Twitter, Swine Flu, and Stock Market were the others in the toppers list. ‘Cash for clunkers’ was another popular search keyword that stood at number 7 place this year.

Top Yahoo Keywords For 2009

The top three spots were bagged by Michael Jackson, Twilight, and World Wrestling Entertainment respectively. Rest two spots in yahoo keyword were bagged by Megan Fox and Britney Spears. These two have been part of this list since the year 2001 when Yahoo originally started to release such data. The ghost of recession kept looming on the brains of different Internet surfers and henceforth Yahoo! compiled the list of top economy related yahoo keywords. The yahoo keyword that topped the list was ‘coupons’. Obama was the top searched politician for 2009 and hence an top 10 Obama-related yahoo keywords was also compiled. The very famous inaugration was at the top followed by biography, speeches, and stimulus plan.

The year started with people madly searching for “What is Twitter?” but later on the topic changed to discussions related with Twitter. Seems like search results helped the planet quick enough so that they can move to better queries!

Google Zeitgeist!

Well, it’s Google and it has to be different. So the name Zeitgeist! As even a kid will guess, Michael Jackson topped the popular search keywords list for 2009 while facebook bagged the second spot. Surprisingly, Spanish social networking website Tuenti bagged third spotwhile Turkish based social networking website Sanalika bagged the fifth spot. Twitter settled down with fourth spot. Barack Obama was at number four position in the fastest falling search keywords just because his presence in News Channels made it easy for people to keep track of his activities. Real Madrid bagged the number 1 spot for those fastest rising in sports while acai berry bagged number one spot in food and drinks list.

Though Google always supports interactivity and easyness for its users but it looks like the huge cost of running orkut has forced them to optimize ad placement by compromising the interactivity. For communities with considerably large members Google used to place ads below the the block that shows community members but in last few days they have started to show these ads right above the community members block. They will surely get many more ad clicks as the ad placement now is on a very visible position.

I agree that this won’t decrease the level of interactivity too much but it will affect it by some percentage. Though they are still not showing ads on other communities with less number of community members.

Did you recognize anything out of that image above? No? Check that again. It’s a Google logo! Yeah, today (27th April,2009) is the birthday of Samuel Morse. He was an American Painter and and was the creator of single wire telegraph system. To be precise, he was the creator of the very famous Morse Code. This is how Google is celebrating his birthday. Simply awesome! You can get a detailed list of every possible Google Logo at this website which is dedicated entirely to Google Logos only.

Around one percent of users who use Google Search click on I’m Feeling Lucky button so as to be taken directly to the site which tops Google results. As per Sergey Bin, Google’s co-found, the search engine giant loses around $110 million every year due to this button.

When people click on I’m Feeling Lucky button then they are directly taken to a site which tops Google results and the search engine company fails to display ads on the search page! Although Google can get rid of the button and add up that huge chunk to their yearly income but as expected they won’t do that in near future. Don’t Do Evil.

Are you in USA and did you see the Thank You page which is displayed after the download of Google Chrome is complete? If yes then you are amongst the first 2 million who actually saw that Thank You page within the first 7 days after the launch of Google Chrome.

As per Nielsen, from all the users who used Internet last week in US about 1.4% of those Internet surfers downloaded Google Chrome. I guess that is huge success for some a newly launched browser. Remember that many of those users might have downloaded Google Chrome just to check how the new browser behaves. I am sure that many shifted to their default browsers after chroming for couple of hours.

[via Download Squad]