Are Year-End Search Lists Meaningless?

It's that time of year again. You know, the time for "The Year In Review" lists by the thousands telling us what was cool and popular in whatever niche you can imagine. Of course, the search engine industry is not immune from taking the yearly look-back, compiling most popular search lists for our amusement. The reason I say these lists are amusing is because they don't honestly seem to be truly representative of what their audiences are looking for, a fact that Business 2.0 blog pointed out. As you would expect, these lists are censored in the sense that adult-related searches have been omitted. However, a quick glance at any unfiltered MSN Live Search - Ronaldinho AOL Search - Weather While Yahoo's is probably the most accurate indicator (Britney made a daring return to search engine prominence with her marriage troubles and the resulting data leak debacle, we have a much better understanding of what AOL searchers are looking for. The Business 2.0 blog So here's the truth about AOL users: They're not clueless geezers. They're smart enough to know they want to get the heck out of AOL.com and onto somewhere else. If there's any point to take from this, it's that these year-end Zeitgeists are not the most factual lists known to man. If you want a better example of what's actually being searched, you may want to check out Murdok. Visit Murdok for the