2009’s Most Popular Internet Searches (Cue Groaning)

By Sherrie Gulmahamad on December 2nd, 2009

It’s that time of year, a time for shopping frenzies, turkey-based food orgies, and finding out what everyone was Googling all year long! Therefore, in a certain way, the end of the year is extremely sad and depressing. Sorry.

Please note, these results aren’t actual queries, rather, scrubbed lists of “trending topics” released by Google and Bing. Dead celebs figure prominently — Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Natasha Richardson, Patrick Swayze and Billy Mays — as well as people who shouldn’t be celebrities at all — the Gosselins. It’s always groan-worthy to realize that dead famous people are more important than dead not-famous people, or significant historical events. Hello, you know the Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago! Not important, I guess. For a quick refresher, last year Google’s Zeitgeist list included Sarah Palin, Barack Obama, and the Jonas Brothers. Clearly things are more interesting in an election year.

Everyone’s favorite vampire-based addiction, New Moon, is also featured on all three lists, as well as everyone’s favorite artsy pop-poseur, Lady Gaga (yeah, I called her a poseur. It’s called BJORK, Google that up, see when she was doing her thang. Answer: before Lady Gaga). Glee and Paranormal Activity also clearly made big impacts in the pop cultural atmosphere, making breaking into song and being severely startled very popular in ‘09.

Still. Every year they release these trending topics lists I feel like giggling. Apparently a LOT of people continue type URLs into the Google and Bing search engines, unaware that a lot of browsers will let you just type that stuff right into the navigation box. You don’t need to type FACEBOOK into the Google box, people! You can just go to Facebook! It’s FASTER.