Social networking tops 2006 search rankings

Social networking sites are at the top of the Google search lists

Google's newly released Year End Zeitgeist for 2006 shows that social networking is top of the search lists.

After monitoring the most searched for terms on Google.com for the whole year, the search giant has revealed that social networking has dominated web searches.

'Bebo' took the crown as the most searched for term throughout the year, followed by 'MySpace'.

Another expected entry for 2006 was 'world cup' in third place, followed in fourth by user-generated video site 'metacafe'. YouTube did not even get a look in, although the search term 'video' came in seventh.

Fifth and sixth spots were 'radioblog' and 'wikipedia', which also got a mention in tenth as 'wiki'. Eighth and ninth positions went to 'rebelde' and 'mininova'.

'Paris Hilton' and 'Orlando Bloom' topped the most searched for news items with 'cancer', 'podcasting' and 'Hurricane Katrina' following close behind.

Current events were outlined by the leading search query 'who is Borat' and 'what is Hezbollah', while the Duke University Lacrosse rape scandal topped the scandal searches.

Nicole Kidman beat Tom Cruise to the top in terms of most search for wedding, while Paul McCartney led the way for divorce searches. Suri Cruise stole the limelight in terms of baby searches, even beating Shiloh Jolie-Pitt.

• Google Year End Zeitgeist for 2006