According to the Dailey Domainer, “Yahoo” has recently replaced “Sex” as the most popular search term on Google. Very odd, isn’t it? The most popular search term on Google is now the name of its biggest search competitor, Yahoo, more popular even than sex.
Sex is, by the way, very popular as a search term in all languages and countries, but according to Google Trends, which monitors (and saves) every Google search ever made (but does not track or identify the persons or computers who make searches), “sex” as a search term is most popular in cities in India and Turkey. The city of Chennai, India (aka Madras) today holds the record for the city making the most search requests for “sex.” In fact, all of the top ten cities for this term are in Turkey and India. The United States does not even make the top ten of countries. According to Google Trends, the top countries for this search are:
1. Pakistan
2. Egypt
3. India
4. Iran
5. Morocco
6. Turkey
7. Viet Nam
8. Saudi Arabia
9. Croatia
10. Indonesia
There is a global cultural message here to be sure; but enough about sex, how about about the new favorite, Yahoo? Google Trends says that the city where you most find this search is Bogota, Columbia, with three cities in Japan after that. Only two cities in the U.S. make the top ten list, Pleasanton and Irvine, California. The top ten countries to search for Yahoo on Google are:
1. El Salvador
2. Japan
3. Romania
4. Colombia
5. Malaysia
6. Bolivia
7. Venezuela
8. Peru
9. France
10. Mexico
Why are so many people worldwide now searching for Yahoo on Google? Obviously it shows the dominance of Google’s Internet presence. But this curious phenomena also reveals a new trend in Internet computer usage. It seems that fewer people are bothering to type in the domain addresses of the webs they want to go to. Instead, they are typing the name into the Google search box. So instead of typing www.yahoo.com into the top address bar on your web browser, and hitting the enter button, people are starting from Google, entering Yahoo, then clicking on the Google display of Yahoo after the search. This is the speculation of the Dailey Domainer, and I am inclined to agree. They have further research and information to back that up if you are interested.
Finally, to bring this all back home, what are the top cities for “e-discovery” search? Google says they are:
1. Washington
2. New York
3. San Francisco
4. Chicago
After that, the other U.S. cities making up the top ten list have too few results to be significant. A search of the terms “electronic discovery” brings a more reliable result, with the top ten cities reported to be:
1. Seattle
2. Washington
3. New York
4. Portland
5. Houston
6. San Francisco
7. Chicago
8. Boston
9. Minneapolis
10. Dallas
[…] you get a slightly different result where Toronto is 8th and Los Angeles is 9th. I reported on this same search in 2006 with essentially the same results, but the overall volume of these searches is way […]