Ask.com's Top 10 has Google, but no Britney

Ask.com released its Top 10 list for Web search terms for 2007 on Friday and it was noteworthy as much for what made the list as for what didn't.

No. 1 is MySpace, followed in order by: Dictionary, Google, Themes, Area Codes, Cars, Weather, Games, Song Lyrics, and Movies.

Yes, Google is in the third spot. Now, why would anyone go to Ask.com and type in "google"? Weird!

The irony was not lost on Ask.com spokesman Nicholas Graham, who also insisted to this incredulous reporter that adult or sex terms were not among the top search terms at Ask.

"It's an unvarnished list and item No. 3 (Google) is a testament to that," Graham said. "If other search engines ponied up their real deal, straight-forward lists of their own I suspect Ask would rank high."

Over at Yahoo, Britney Spears, did it again and tops Yahoo's most searched for terms list for this year. Google doesn't release a top search terms list and instead looks at fastest rising. The iPhone tops Google's list.

A Google representative said that if the company were to release a list of the most popular search terms it would probably look similar to Ask's list. Asked if it might also include the name of rival search engines and adult terms, the representative said she could not say without examining the search data.

A Yahoo representative did not immediately return a call and an e-mail seeking comment.

Why go to Ask.com to search for 'google'? Apparently, a lot of people do it, according to Ask's Top 10 search term list.

(Credit: Ask.com)

[keaiping]

What does that mean?

I bet people search for Google, for the same reason they search anything else, because they heard the term somewhere and do not know what it means. So since they're searching for it on Ask.com, does that make Ask more popular than Google?

[digitalvision313]

It makes some sense to me...

This doesn't surprise me. Note that Google's own statement was that their list would look similar.<br /><br />I think there is a lot of data about this sort of thing that search engines aren't telling us - after all, as a marketing person, you want to <br />release the data that is the most interesting story to get ink - not necessarily what the exact data is, especially if it looks like the other <br />guys'. <br /><br />My interest would be to see demographic data on age/sex/etc in regards to who uses what search engines.<br /><br />Jeremiah Staes<br /><a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.interactivemediatips.com" target="_newWindow">http://www.interactivemediatips.com</a>

[jpothorst]

Educated User

You would be suprised at how many people don't know the difference between the address field of their browser and the search field of the web site. I've seen many users type addresses into the search field as if they were entering it into the address field not knowing any different. How much could this influence the top search results?

[tilly357]

i don't know why anyone would search for google do peoplelive under a rock the name is <a href="http://candlesndiffusers.com"> everywhere</a>