By VERNE KOPYTOFF
San Francisco Chronicle
Pop diva Britney Spears and President-elect Barack Obama captivated Americans in 2008, judging from their top rankings in the annual lists of the top 10 search terms from Yahoo and Google.
The findings show a public simultaneously obsessed with frivolity and politics.
But they also leave the door open to debate. Both companies used tracking methods that virtually guaranteed the lists would be packed with pop culture.
Spears, who is on the comeback trail after a series of loopy antics, made No. 1 on Yahoo's top 10 list for the seventh time in the past eight years. It's like she's cast a spell on Internet users so that they type in her name whenever they see a search box to get the latest on her head shaving, hospitalization and planned concert tour.
Following Spears on Yahoo's list was WWE, the bombastic, trash-talking, chair-tossing World Wrestling Entertainment.
At No. 3 was Obama, who went from being a political upstart to leading a successful presidential campaign during which he astutely used the Web to connect with his supporters.
Yahoo doesn't reveal exactly how it calculates its rankings other than to say it analyzes the number of queries for a specific term and its increase in popularity. Generic search terms like "car" are ignored, as are most company names.
Reflecting the importance of this year's presidential campaign, Obama led Google's U.S. top 10 list. In an act of bipartisanship, the Republican Party also made the rankings, with conservative favorite Fox News at No. 6 and Sarah Palin, the former vice presidential candidate, at No. 7.
Internationally, Palin was an even bigger superstar. She placed No. 1 on Google's global list, compared with Obama's No. 6 -- no doubt a minor consolation prize to the Republican ticket losing the election.
Year-end lists are a way for search companies to showcase the data they collect every day about the billions of queries they field. In some cases, they share the information -- dissected by day, week or month -- with marketers to help them gauge how much buzz a product is getting online.
Search engines are quick to emphasize that queries they analyze are anonymous.
For an unadulterated window into the American psyche, Ask.com's list is probably the best bet. Called the "real deal," it's touted as an unedited ranking of the most popular search terms, minus the massaging done by others.
"Dictionary" led Ask.com's rankings, highlighting the frequent struggles many of us have with spelling and definitions. MySpace was No. 2 while Google was No. 3, showing that people are simply using the search box as a de facto address bar.
Sure, Ask.com's rankings lack pizzazz. But they reflect the mundane reality of how people use search engines to find practical information and to get to where they want to go on the Web, including to an Ask.com rival.
