Google Zeigeist 2006

Google has released its Zeitgeist for 2006, an accounting of the top things people searched for this year. As usual, its a multi-page affair, and is more like last year’s text-only version than 2004’s wild and wacky interactive Flash Zeitgeist.
The top search of the year, surprisingly, was Bebo, a rising social network. This I find hard to believe, as MySpace, the number two search term, is a more popular social network, one that some have said is surpassing MySpace in page views, and Google’s own Trends says MySpace had more searches:
bebo | myspace

So, what is Google’s basis for calling bebo number one? We know Google makes editorial decisions in the Zeitgeist, since some of the biggest search queries are navigational, not popular, like “google”, “yahoo” or “disney”, and sexual, like “porn” and “uh, you can guess what else”. There are two theories why Bebo […]

Original post by Nathan Weinberg and software by Elliott Back