Among all of the 2009 lists out there, Experian Hitwise released their version of the top 10 most-searched terms of the year and the results were far from surprising.
According to the company, “facebook” topped the 2009 list after finishing 10th in 2008’s list.
“Myspace” was second, falling a spot after finishing atop the list in 2008, and it was followed by “craigslist,” which also fell a spot after finishing second on 2008’s list.
“Youtube” finished fourth in 2009, climbing two spots after finishing seventh in 2008, while “yahoo mail” was fifth in 2009, climbing three spots from its eighth place finish in the previous year.
“Google” was sixth, falling two spots from 2008, followed by “yahoo,” which fell one spot, and “ebay” which fell five spots.
“Facebook login” and “myspace.com” rounded out the top 10 list for 2009, with the former not appearing in 2008’s list and with the latter falling five spots.
Experian Hitwise notes that the data used to come up with this list was “based on the top 300 unfiltered search terms for January to November 2009.”
The company also highlights the fact that “facebook” and “facebook.com” accounted for 1.09 percent of all searches in 2009, while MySpace terms accounted for 1.02 percent of all search terms for the year.
In terms of visits, www.google.com topped the list in 2009, repeating its first-place finish in 2008. The search giant received 6.70 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2009, according to the company.
Mail.yahoo.com repeated its second-place finish, while www.facebook.com was third, www.yahoo.com was fourth and www.myspace.com was fifth.
Mail.live.com, www.youtube.com, search.yahoo.com, www.msn.com and www.ebay.com rounded out the top 10 list for 2009.
Nielsen’s lengthy list of many top 10 lists included a ranking of the top 10 online Web brands in 2009, which placed Google at the top with an average monthly unique audience of 147.3 million visitors.
Yahoo! was second with 134.2 million, followed by MSN/Windows Live/Bing with 112.4 million, YouTube with 100.2 million, Facebook with 94.5 million, Microsoft with 92.1 million, AOL Media Network with 91.5 million, Fox Interactive Media with 69.0 million, Wikipedia with 59.2 million and Apple with 58.5 million.
WebProNews listed its top 15 most-discussed stories of 2009, and the top two were related to eBay. DMOZ, bloggers as journalists, Apple vs. Droid and Netbooks were among some of the other stories that were hotly discussed on the Web site during the year.
Looking forward, Geoff Ramsey, CEO of eMarketer, discussed seven predictions for 2010. Among them was an expectation that “More marketers will increasingly embrace online video advertising, supported by the twin boom of video streams and video ad networks. Further support for video ad growth will come from sites that offer a deeper catalog of professional, premium video content, which will need to introduce hybrid plans that combine subscription fees with advertising.”
Ramsey also expects the number of Internet users to stabilize, marketers to call for better means to measure the “additional unpaid exposure a brand gets when consumers share about the brand online,” continued convergence between televisions and online video, an increase in mobile ad spending, more serious attempts at measuring social media’s influence on sales and an upward trajectory for Internet marketing in the U.K. thanks to a strong 2009.
Sources:
http://www.hitwise.com/us/press-center/press-releases/facebook-top-search-term-in-2009/
http://en-us.nielsen.com/main/news/news_releases/2009/december/the_nielsen_company
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/12/31/top-15-things-you-loved-to-talk-about-in-2009
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007446
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