Post by david g. on Dec 21, 2005 14:00:40 GMT -5
Rumours about a secret daughter and a new album helped Janet Jackson reach the giddy heights of most searched term in Google News for 2005.
The singer, who gained worldwide notoriety for her "wardrobe malfunction" at the Superbowl last year, beat Hurricane Katrina, the Boxing Day tsunami and her brother's child molestation trial to the top spot.
Google's search lists come less than a week after Yahoo! published its own collection of top internet searches, in which Britney Spears made a comeback to the top spot.
Google chose not to reveal the top 10 of its own general search terms this year, listing instead the "top gainers" of 2005, led by social networking site MySpace, the file-sharing network Ares and Chinese language search engine Baidu.
However additional charts displayed by the company revealed that Speares' pregnancy helped her to push well ahead of rivals Mariah Carey and Shakira in the search stakes during the year while Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston's split also caused a large spike in celebrity-related searches.
When it came to films, searchers were more switched on by Hogwarts than Middle-earth, while Yoda and "the Force" accounted for most of Star Wars-related queries.
"As a company that tries to do no evil, we were quite pleased to see that 'the Force' outdraws the 'dark side' in search queries," Google said.
A third list highlighted search terms on its shopping portal Froogle, where music players proved themselves most wanted. Different iPod varieties featured heavily in the list alongside more general MP3 queries. Digital cameras, Sony's PlayStation Portable and the Xbox also featured in the top 10.
Google News - top searches in 2005
1. Janet Jackson
2. Hurricane Katrina
3. Tsunami
4. Xbox 360
5. Brad Pitt
6. Michael Jackson
7. American Idol
8. Britney Spears
9. Angelina Jolie
10. Harry Potter
Google.com - top gainers of 2005
1. MySpace
2. Ares
3. Baidu
4. wikipedia
5. orkut
6. iTunes
7. Sky News
8. World of Warcraft
9. Green Day
10. Leonardo da Vinci