Top 10 Searches - News Stories

Natural disasters affected virtually every corner of our planet. Hurricanes Gustav and Ike devastated the southern U.S. and the Caribbean. The fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan continued to be a focus throughout the year. But a few surprises to this list included the human interest stories that captivated the curiosity of the country, such as Caylee Anthony, a missing Florida toddler; the pregnant man who allegedly gave birth to a baby girl; and Patrick Swayze's battle against cancer.

News Stories -- Top 10 News Stories according to Yahoo!

1. Hurricanes

2. Caylee and Casey Anthony

3. Election 2008

4. Pakistan

5. Pregnant Man

6. China

7. Iraq

8. Shelley Malil

9. Patrick Swayze

10. Afghanistan

Top 10 Searches for Sport

A worldwide audience couldn't get enough of the Olympics, hungrily hunting down every detail on the characters playing out sports' most marvelously unscripted drama. The Olympics was a nightly epic story, in which Michael Phelps played the ideal leading man, with the mystery of his estranged father breaking the list of most clicked on stories of yahoo.com.

Top 10 Olympian and Sport Searches

1. Michael Phelps

2. Leryn Franco

3. Serena Williams

4. Kobe Bryant

5. Shawn Johnson

6. Jennie Finch

7. Misty May Treanor

8. Ronaldinho

9. Alicia Sacramone

10. Nastia Liukin

What are the most popular search topics on the World Wide Web?

Ever wondered what the most popular search terms were in the last year? Yahoo! made a comprehensive list of the top 10. This not only presents the top ten searches, but overall themes and popular trends that came to the surface, including the economy, politicians, news stories, Olympians, rising celebrities, influential women, and notable deaths. Also included in this year's review are additional top tens in select areas throughout Yahoo!.

Top 10 Overall Searches

1. Britney Spears

2. WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment)

3. Barack Obama

4. Miley Cyrus

5. RuneScape

6. Jessica Alba

7. Naruto

8. Lindsay Lohan

9. Angelina Jolie

10. American Idol

Top Searches for new Celebrities

In 2008, tabloid staples cleaned up their acts due to court-ordered conservatorships (Britney Spears), pledges of sobriety (Lindsay Lohan), and motherhood (Nicole Richie). As a result, celebrity publications and bloggers shifted their focus to a new, younger set of headline makers, the New Brat Pack. Like their 1980s counterparts, the New Brat Pack celebs appear in each other's movies, music videos and social circles. They're all young (21 and under), popular and major money makers. And, their youth subjects them to greater public scrutiny.Disney proteges are coming into their own with huge success, including Miley Cyrus, Vanessa Hudgens, the Jonas Brothers and Zac Efron.

Top 10 Rising Celebrity Searches

1. Miley Cyrus

2. Vanessa Anne Hudgens

3. Chris Brown

4. Jonas Brothers

5. Rihanna

6. Taylor Swift

7. Jamie Lynn Spears

8. Hayden Panettiere

9. Zac Efron

10. Selena Gomez

Top Searches - politicians

What were the top searches on the political battlefield? It was an election of many firsts. Not only did the U.S. elect an African American president for the first time but 2008 also had a notable campaign by former First Lady and Senator Hillary Clinton, and the first female nominee for Vice President in the Republican Party, Alaska governor Sarah Palin. Other candidates secured their fair share of searches as well. On the other hand, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn't involved in the presidential race, but searches for the "Governator" beat Democratic vice presidential pick Joe Biden and Republican candidate Mitt Romney.

Top 10 Politician Searches

1. Barack Obama

2. Sarah Palin

3. John McCain

4. Hillary Clinton

5. George Bush

6. Ron Paul

7. John Edwards

8. Mike Huckabee

9. Arnold Schwarzenegger

10. Mitt Romney

What is the most popular search term on the internet?

Britney Spears has been the most popular search term and person for seven out of eight years on Yahoo!. In 2008, she made a comeback with a new album, three MTV Music Awards, a sitcom guest star role and documentary on her rise, fall and career comeback.

For the benefit of those extra-terrestrial being who have no clue who Britney Spears is, a quick overview of this Princess of Pop:

Britney Jean Spears (born December 2, 1981), is an American recording artist and entertainer. Born in McComb, Mississippi and raised in Kentwood, Louisiana, Spears first appeared on national television in 1992 as a contestant on the Star Search program, and went on to star in Disney Channel's television series The New Mickey Mouse Club from 1993–1994. After a brief membership with the pop musical group Innosense, Spears signed a recording contract with Jive Records, releasing her debut album ...Baby One More Time in 1999. The album established her as a pop icon and "bona fide pop phenomenon", credited for influencing the revival of teen pop in the late 1990s.

Spears is ranked as the eighth best-selling female recording artist in the United States according to the Recording Industry Association of America with 31 million certified albums and one of the world's best-selling music artists having sold an estimated 83 million records worldwide. Spears also holds the title to multiple Guinness World Records.

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Top Search Topics - Barack Obama

Barack Obama was the second most searched for person in 2008 on Yahoo!. Headlines of his election victory received the most clicks than any other story on yahoo.com this year, and he was the third most searched term overall. Obama soared up the search ranks tremendously as the election campaign moved forward with consumers using Yahoo! Search to get informed, learn more about him and decide how to vote in this critically important election.

Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician and the President-elect of the United States. The first African American to be elected President of the United States, Obama was elected to be the junior United States Senator from Illinois in 2004 and served until his resignation on November 16, 2008, following his election to the Presidency. His term of office as the forty-fourth U.S. president will begin on January 20, 2009.

He is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Obama worked as a community organizer and practiced as a civil rights attorney in Chicago before serving three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. He also taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, Obama was elected to the Senate in November 2004. Obama delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004.

As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress, Obama helped create legislation to control conventional weapons and to promote greater public accountability in the use of federal funds. He also made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. During the 110th Congress, he helped create legislation regarding lobbying and electoral fraud, climate change, nuclear terrorism, and care for U.S. military personnel returning from combat assignments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Top Search Terms - Miley Cyrus

This year also marked the coming out party for Miley Cyrus, who discarded her Disney persona of "Hannah Montana" and launched her own album under her real name to make the top five in Yahoo's top search terms

Miley Ray Cyrus (born Destiny Hope Cyrus on November 23, 1992) is an American actress and singer-songwriter. Cyrus is better known for starring as Miley Stewart/Hannah Montana in the television series Hannah Montana on the Disney Channel.

Cyrus became a sensation after Hannah Montana debuted in March 2006. Following the success of the show, in October 2006, a soundtrack CD was released in which she sang eight songs from the show. In December 2007, she was ranked #17 in the list of "Forbes Top Twenty Superstar Earners under the age of 25" with an annual earning of US$3.5 million. As of December 2007, she is working on a movie spin-off of Hannah Montana, titled Hannah Montana: The Movie which set to release on April 10, 2009.

Cyrus's solo music career began with the release of her debut album, Meet Miley Cyrus on June 23, 2007. Her second album, Breakout was released on July 22, 2008. Breakout is Cyrus's first album that does not involve the Hannah Montana franchise. Both albums debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200.

In 2008, Cyrus was listed among artists and entertainers as one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World.

Top Searches for influential women

Not only were Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton closer than ever to the nation's top elected offices, but many other women were popular among Yahoo! searchers this year. The presidential race fed into a huge rise in popularity for Tina Fey (portraying Sarah Palin on "Saturday Night Live"), Michelle Obama (wife of the President-elect) and Katie Couric (political interviewer and newscaster). Undefeated kickboxing champ Gina Carano also upped her profile in her turn as Crush on "American Gladiators," then later made television history in the first primetime female fight.

Top 10 Searched Influential Women

1. Angelina Jolie

2. Sarah Palin

3. Oprah

4. Hillary Clinton

5. Gina Carano

6. Tina Fey

7. Michelle Obama

8. Katie Couric

9. Barbara Walters

10. Dara Torres

List of the most hated internet words

British pollsters YouGov questioned 2,091 adults earlier this month for the poll commissioned by the Lulu Blooker Prize, a literary award for books, which released the results in a statement.

Earlier this month, the growing use of words inspired by cyberspace was highlighted when the Collins English Dictionary announced that a string of them would be included in their ninth edition.

Can you guess which words were most hated ?

"Blog", "netiquette", "cookie" and "wiki" have been voted among the most irritating words spawned by the Internet, according to the results of a poll published Thursday.

Topping the list of words most likely to make web users "wince, shudder or want to bang your head on the keyboard" was folksonomy, a term for a web classification system.

"Blogosphere", the collective name for blogs or online journals, was second; "blog" itself was third; "netiquette", or Internet etiquette, came fourth and "blook", a book based on a blog, was fifth.

"Cookie", a file sent to a user's computer after they visit a website, came in ninth, while "wiki", a collaborative website edited by its readers, was tenth.

Top 10 Economic Search Topics

As 2008 came to a close, the nation's economic turmoil battled with the presidential election for the hearts and wallets of searchers. In February, the Treasury Department announced it would be disbursing stimulus checks to boost economic activity and taxpayers clamored to know if the check was actually in the mail. The fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis hit Wall Street hard in October as the Dow Jones Industrials fell to its lowest point, producing the biggest point drop in the Dow's 112-year history. Gas prices marked the only silver lining, falling sharply late in the year after reaching all-time highs during the summer.

Here is the top 10 of Yahoo's Search Topics concerning the Economy


1. IRS Stimulus Checks

2. Oil Prices

3. Gold Prices

4. Gas Prices

5. Dow Jones

6. Sallie Mae

7. Stock Market

8. AIG

9. Foreclosures

10. Debt Consolidation