For the record, I’m excited about the big game (any chance to see Tom Brady get smashed, you know?). And judging by one metric, it appears that there is quite a bit of interest in watching this year’s Super Bowl…live.

Yahoo has announced via tweet that a couple of specific Super Bowl-related searches are up this week:

Hopefully (but highly unlikely), folks are able to happen upon some sweet information on winning free tickets. Actual tickets are going to cost you a pretty penny. For instance, right now a pair of lower club tickets is going for over $12,000 after 13 bids on eBay.

Today, a somewhat contradicting study said that football fans actually prefer watching the Super Bowl on a TV at home as opposed to actually attending the game.

Dictionary.com’s purpose is to provide users with definitions (as well as spelling and context). So a look at the top searches there reflect less what people are interested in learning more information about, and more what they are trying to understand the meaning of on a word-by-word basis.

The top words searched for on Dictionary.com in 2009 have been:

1. Affect
2. Ubiquitous
3. Irony
4. Socialism
5. Effect
6. Melancholy
7. Love
8. Integrity
9. Nostalgic
10. Pedantic

Affect and effect are obviously searched for more because they are commonly misspelled in place of one another. Socialism’s position is likely a product of much political dialogue over the past year in this country. "Ubiquitous" is a word that has seemingly become kind of trendy to say. I have heard it used much more this year than any other year I can remember. Perhaps the most interesting entry is "love." That, I don’t have an explanation for.

The top gainers of 2009 on Dictionary.com were:

1. Esurient
2. Impeded
3. Shuddering
4. Fugacious
5. Suffering
6. Negative
7. Namaste
8. Adjuvant
9. Callipygian
10. Twitter

The top decliners were:

1. Bush
2.  Maverick
3.  Solace
4.  Liberal
5.  Obsequious
6.  Rhetoric
7.  Superfluous
8. Condescending
9.  Cynical
10. Ostentatious

Finally, the most commonly misspelled words in dictionary.com queries were:

1. Perseverance
2. Convenient
3. Embarrassed
4. Prerogative
5. Pretentious
6. Appalled
7. Genius
8. Definitely
9. Inadvertently
10. Separate

"Dictionary.com’s top searched words of the year clearly illustrate the everyday value of our service in helping people communicate smarter and more effectively," said David Wygant, Senior Director of Products and Programming. "With more than 43 million users relying on Dictionary.com per month, our end-of-year lists serve as a barometer of the prevailing attitudes and sentiments of people throughout 2009."

I think it would be interesting to see a list from Google on the use of it’s "define:" feature, which is a search operator that retrieves word definitions. I wonder if there would be many parallels. 
 

Related Articles:

> Google Year-End Zeitgeist Published

> Yahoo Releases Top Searches Of 2009

> Top Trending Topics on Bing

Google’s share reached 68.9 percent, which puts the company on track to pass 70 as a sort of holiday gift to itself.  Yahoo, meanwhile, is probably shopping for pink slips – its share slipped 3.1 percent from the previous month (and 10 percent from the previous year) to hit 17.4 percent.

Ask did all right, losing just a tenth of a percent point from its October standing – it’s now at 3.9 percent.  MSN/Live was the one major engine (other than Google) to come out of November in better shape than it entered, though – it gained 0.7 percent in a month-to-month comparison, landing at 9.2 percent overall, according to Compete.

Hitwise didn’t see that gain in Microsoft’s numbers, but all of the statistics are pretty much in agreement, otherwise.  Also, if you’re in the mood for a little poetry, David Utter presented Hitwise’s stats in a significantly more entertaining manner.

Online video has increased in interest through 2007 to the point where people expect to find it on the websites they visit. Truveo broke down the top searches they have seen into top viral videos, TV moments, and music videos.

She may not have won Miss Teen USA, but Lauren Caitlin Upton may as well have been crowned Miss Teen YouTube after Miss Teen South Carolina’s now-famous flubbed answer to a geography question became the top viral video Truveo saw this year.

David Chase’s choice of a close to the HBO series “The Sopranos” had people frantically reaching for their remotes when the screen turned black. When it became obvious that the series had ended on that note, the querying began in earnest for what became the most searched TV moment.

In the music scene, Truveo said everybody wanted to “Crank Dat.” Even though it seems like Rhianna’s “Umbrella” has been everywhere, her video placed second in searches to Soulja Boy’s.

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He says "just noticed today that it seems to be regionalising results automatically. I.e., being in Australia, live.com is automatically serving results focused towards, but not necessarily from, Australia."

However he also observes that "They have added an "Australia Only" tick box which indeed does only return results from Australia, but there seems to be no simple way of turning off the regioanlisation for general results." Why not? One may ask, are they still testing it.

In the same thread Bill observes "I see a few local listings at the top if I search for something like "sushi" or "pizza". I’m seeing a few local listings in Tokyo for shops. (However I’m in the other half of the country.) I don’t see a Japan tick box though."

Different regions different happenings!

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Robin Goad demonstrates that searches for Christmas markets increase by huge amounts during the fall and early winter – a graph shows spikes from about zero to 0.035 percent.  It’s not hard to guess why, as the Wikipedia entry portrays these markets as rather wonderful places to find food, drink, and presents.

Still, it wouldn’t be terribly productive to just sit here and dream about Lebkuchen and mulled wine (I have no idea, by the way, if it’s advisable to consume those two things in a single sitting).  So we’ll move back to the statistics.

“During November this year, the most searched for locations were UK cities, with Lincoln, Bath and Manchester the most popular,” reports Goad.  He then continues, “However, searches for Christmas markets vary depending on term being used and the time of year.  People searching for markets outside of the UK are more likely to use the plural.  They are also more likely to start searching earlier in the year, presumably in order to allow time to plan travel.”

Americans who are interested in seeing a Christmas market (without leaving the country) might do well to visit Leavenworth (Washington), Bethlehem (Pennsylvania), Tulsa, Baltimore, Chicago, or Denver.

All right, all right, so that’s jumping ahead a little.  Numbers one through five, then, are “MySpace,” “Dictionary,” “Google,” “Themes,” and “Area Codes,” respectively.  I skipped one, two, four, and five because they’re not too fascinating.  Number three, on the other hand, is just sad – people apparently needed one search engine to find another.

Picking up after “Cars,” then, “Weather” was seventh, “Games” eighth, “Song Lyrics,” ninth, and “Movies” tenth.

Again, those aren’t the most interesting terms in the world, so on the Ask.com Blog, Ken Grobe broke things down into categories about presidential candidates, sports teams, television shows, and pregnant stars.  I’ll not share my views about American politics, but Obama came in first, Clinton second, and Thompson third.

As for sports teams, I was pleased to see the Boston Red Sox at number one and the New England Patriots at number three.  The Dallas Cowboys took up space in third place.

Hannah Montana came out ahead of the pack of television shows, with Family Guy and Spongebob Squarepants following an unknown distance behind.  And in searches for girls with big bellies, Jennifer Lopez, Salma Hayek, and Christina Aguilera grabbed the top three positions.

Outpacing all other searches – searches that could paint the public in a more socially conscience light – was the pursuit of games and girls. Not global warming or war in Iraq; not the latest mind-spinning developments in quantum theory; not Net Neutrality; not who made it into this year’s edition of America’s Best Short Stories.

Britney Spears’ latest catastrophe and professional wrestling. That’s what America was searching for. Granted, Britney was one long train wreck this year (I know because I was constantly updated about it on the news), and Paris Hilton (3) and Lindsay Lohan (6) got to spend some time in the clink.But just one year I’d like to look at one of these lists and see a genuine interest in something – anything – that doesn’t originate from the glowing teat.

That may be the reason Yahoo didn’t really want to release the top ten; it doesn’t sit well with societal observers that the public is more interested in boobs and brawn – and the escapism they provide – than issues pressing all of humanity. You’d think all that sand in your ears would get annoying after a while.

But the company also released the most popular search trends, divided into more meaningful categories, so that at least there’s evidence among the one billion searches this past year that the people aren’t totally submerged in the warm goo of pop culture. So without further lamentations, we’ll present all of the top Yahoo searches of 2007, and let you make your own judgments.

Top Searches Overall: Britney Spears; WWE; Paris Hilton; Naruto; Beyonce; Lindsay Lohan; RuneScape; Fantasy Football; Fergie; Jessica Alba

Top News Stories: Saddam Hussein; Iran; Iraq; President George W. Bush; Oil and Gas prices; Barack Obama; Hillary Rodham Clinton; San Diego Fires; Afghanistan; Virginia Tech

Top Environmental Searches: Recycling; Global Warming; Freecycle; Earth; Pollution; Al Gore; Environmental Protection Agency; Live Earth; Hybrid Cars; Solar Energy

Top Recall-Related Searches: Pet Food Recall; Fisher Price; Thomas the Tank Engine; Dog Food Recall; Menu Foods; E. coli; Food Poisoning; Toy Recall; Peanut Butter Recall; Topps

Top Searches On Yahoo Kids: Games; Animals; Dinosaurs; Math; Hannah Montana; Solar System; George Washington; Halloween; Sally Ride; Global Warming

Top Tech Searches: YouTube; Wikipedia; Facebook; iTunes; iPod; iPhone; Nintendo Wii; Xbox; Sony PlayStation 3; Guitar Hero

Top Sports News Searches: NASCAR; Maria Sharapova; Boston Red Sox; David Beckham; Serena Williams; Chicago Bears; Christian Ronaldo; Super Bowl; Ronaldinho; Ashley Force

Top 10 Del.icio.us Tags: Design; HDTV; Games; Music; Web 2.0; Video; Ubuntu; Travel; Photography; Mac

Top Troubled Stars: Britney Spears; Paris Hilton; Anna Nicole Smith; Vanessa Anne Hudgens; Nicole Richie; Amy Winehouse; Rosie O’Donnell; Tara Conner; Michael Vick; Owen Wilson
 

This isn’t a terribly good sign for retailers and the economy, since, instead of having cash to throw across the counter, people are looking for Visa and MasterCard to fill the gap.  Heather Hopkins reports that, “[f]urther emphasizing the financial woes, among the top non-branded searches for credit cards are ‘credit cards for bad credit’ and ‘bad credit credit cards’.”

Of course, not everyone is going to be hurt by this trend; credit card companies will, after weeding out certain applicants, presumably profit off the rest.  “Capital One is the brand to watch – with the share of US Internet searches for ‘capital one credit card’ almost doubling (+96%) year on year last week,” notes Hopkins.

Still, it looks like the rest of this month and December could be a little financially shaky.  Perhaps – and I’m only half-joking here – parents could both save some money and avoid recall worries by getting into the toy-building business themselves.

“We saw a 6 fold increase in the share of US Internet searches for ‘gas prices’ last week and the term hit its highest peak since May,” reported Hitwise’s Heather Hopkins.  As a result, she “decided to focus on who is concerned most about rising gas prices using our demographic and lifestyle data.”

So what group led the way with its worries?  Old folks who were once able to pay $.25 per gallon?  Parents whose children might wind up spending $10 per teaspoon?  No and not necessarily, according to Hopkins’s look at GasBuddy.com.

Hopkins wrote, “Affluent Suburbia and Small Town Contentment, the two groups most likely, according to offline statistics collected by Experian, to own three or more cars were two of the three groups over-indexed on the GasBuddy.com website.”

She later continued, “The third group that was over-indexed on GasBuddy.com was Struggling Societies.  Households in this group were 164% more likely to be on the website than average for the online population – and accounted for 21% of the website’s visits in the past four weeks.  This group is more likely than average to own one small car.”

For the poorer members of our society, that doesn’t sound good.  On the bright side, it’s easier to improve the fuel efficiency of one small car than a fleet of luxury sedans.