Yahoo’s most-searched list led by BP Oil Spill, World Cup...and Miley Cyrus
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Drumroll, please: The end-of-the-year lists are starting to roll out.
Wednesday, we’ll have the top questions posed on Ask.com and the most popular searches on Yahoo, Bing and AOL. Google’s list is coming later this month.
Yahoo first. The search engine company has been keeping a tally of requests since 2001, with top queries year to year ranging from music download service Kazaa to television show ‘American Idol’ to pop idol Britney Spears.
With 631 million visitors a month in 2010, celebrity-watchers were outnumbered by people looking up information on the BP oil rig explosion in April and subsequent spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Billions of queries pushed the man-made disaster to the No. 1 spot -– a first for a news story. The FIFA World Cup in South Africa followed, propelled by legions of soccer fans.
Searches for iPhone, now in its fourth iteration, came in sixth. The rest of the list is crowded with clicks for entertainment -– starlets Miley Cyrus, Kim Kardashian, Megan Fox and more. Oh, and of course teen heartthrob Justin Bieber made the cut at No. 8, likely boosted by his hordes of young “Belieber” devotees.
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-- Tiffany Hsu
Photos, from top: The Deepwater Horizon oil rig burning after an explosion in the Gulf of Mexico in April. (Credit: Gerald Herbert /Associated Press); the FIFA World Cup 2010 semifinal match between Uruguay and Netherlands in South Africa. (Credit: Helmut Fohringer/ EPA)
