What people are searching for on the internet today

The 50 most popular searches in the last 48 hours compared to the 50 most popular searches in the last 6 months

Here we take a (sanitised) look at what people are searching for on the internet  and review the 50 most popular searches in the last 48 hours, compared with the 50 most popular searches over the last 6 months.

Sex, as we’ve previously mentioned, does tend to rather dominate popular searches. Stripping out, if that’s the right word, adult, dubious, offensive, dodgy and, shall we say ‘non-family’ search phrases and keywords, we arrive at this list of the most popular searches on the internet, albeit somewhat santised.

It is, nevertheless, interesting to see just what  people are looking for. Star signs are obviously very popular with searchers, as are some websites with, what you would expect to be, fairly memorable URL’s. It all goes to show just how all encompassing the search engine now is and the importance of having your brand, organisation or message correctly represented within them and by them.

Here’s the 50 most popular recent searches:-

50 Most Popular Searches in the last 48 hours

Nos	Keyword	Count
1	google	4,197
2	youtube	4,145
3	myspace	3,732
4	yahoo	3,650
5	craigslist	3,227
6	breast cancer awareness	2,931
7	yahoo mail	2,807
8	aquarius	2,370
9	ebay	2,328
10	facebook login	2,287
11	yahoo.com	2,107
12	hotmail	1,647
13	facebook.com	1,631
14	mapquest	1,417
15	virgo	1,367
16	gmail	1,314
17	scorpio	1,298
18	you tube	1,297
19	pisces	1,277
20	leo	1,275
21	taurus	1,248
22	aries	1,232
23	libra	1,226
24	cancer	1,204
25	gemini	1,194
26	google.com	1,093
27	sagittarius	1,055
28	msn	1,040
29	capricorn	1,012
30	myspace.com	1,001
31	aol.com	972
32	walmart	961
33	aol	934
34	google search	925
35	hotmail.com	805
36	tea cup pigs	780
37	google maps	775
38	amazon	725
39	cnn	722
40	craiglist com	711
41	www.facebook.com	699
42	yahoo mail login	691
43	facebook	689
44	wikipedia	685
45	halloween costumes	671
46	best buy	657
47	dictionary	649
48	craigs list	629
49	daily horoscope	623
50	bing	610
© Copyright Rivergold Associates Ltd 1998-2009

See how this compares with the longer term trends, here’s the 50 most popular searches in the past 6 months:-

50 Most Popular Searches in the last 6 months

Nos	Keyword	Count
1	youtube	293,662
2	google	286,644
3	myspace	263,790
4	yahoo	255,526
5	craigslist	241,714
6	ebay	166,981
7	aquarius	154,873
8	yahoo.com	137,665
9	yahoo mail	135,656
10	mapquest	117,185
11	facebook	113,634
12	hotmail	113,577
13	you tube	110,278
14	gmail	92,732
15	facebook.com	89,902
16	virgo	87,444
17	scorpio	85,294
18	cancer	85,038
19	leo	83,060
20	aries	81,674
21	libra	81,571
22	pisces	81,391
23	taurus	79,826
24	myspace.com	79,002
25	gemini	78,189
26	msn	72,694
27	sagittarius	71,752
28	craigs list	69,620
29	capricorn	69,594
30	hotmail.com	68,124
31	megan fox	62,781
32	google.com	57,697
33	cnn	56,867
34	aol.com	55,422
35	facebook login	55,132
36	best buy	52,012
37	aol	51,828
38	www.elkware.com	51,763
39	wikipedia	48,592
40	amazon	46,697
41	youtube.com	45,528
42	google maps	44,660
43	fox news	44,264
44	weather	43,692
45	white pages	43,262
46	erin andrews	41,762
47	target	41,055
48	love horoscopes	40,410
49	amazon.com	39,755
50	dictionary	39,166
© Copyright Rivergold Associates Ltd 1998-2009

Official: Keywords aren’t important in search rankings.

Google announce officially that they don’t use the “keywords” meta tag in their web search ranking!

Bad news for all those people who have spent many hours agonising over the keywords that are most important for their website, yes, sorry guys, it’s all been a waste of time!

No, not really! Keywords are the most important element of search engine optimisation, full stop, period, end of story! Without understanding which keywords your clients, users, prospective customers , target customers, in fact anyone who you want to visit your website uses and then making sure your pages are optimised for, or at least contain these keywords, your website will not achieve its potential.

What Google is saying in this important post, that’s had the search world all of a buzz recently, is that for all those people who have spent many hours agonising over the keywords which are most important for their website and then stuffing them all into the “keywords” meta tag, anticipating almost immediate Google no.1 rankings and search engine domination, they will, unfortunately, be disappointed.

Most SEO’s have understood for some time that Google ignores the keywords metatag and filling the box consequently has little effect on a pages ranking’s. Yahoo has also confirmed that it disregards the “keywords” tag although, perhaps typically contrarily, Bing advises otherwise “take advantage of all legitimate opportunities to score keyword credit ” it says.

Zelst‘s policy has been that summarising 5 key phrases for a page is good discipline, provides a prompt for the other elements of on-page optimisation and given the amount of time it adds to the process, if it’s relevant, it is as well to have it there.

The really interesting thing, imho, that came out from the blog and a subsequent YouTube post is that Google has confirmed it is increasingly using well written meta descriptions in their page snippets on a search engine results page.

The snippet is the piece of text that appears below the page title in a search engine results page as illustrated here:-

This description, whilst having no bearing on search rankings from Google, is your opportunity to pitch your page to searchers, courtesy of Google. It’s your 10 second, elevator pitch so stuffing it full of keywords is not its purpose.

So what does this say for SEO?

Well, yes, something we’ve been saying for some time. SEO is not just about stuffing a load of random keywords in your page titles, meta descriptions and “keywords” tags and hoping for the best. It’s about ensuring your page is relevant to your target keywords, they appear in the relevant places on the page, not just in the meta headers, that your titles, meta descriptions, headings, content and tags are all crafted around your target phrases, that your structure, navigation and links are all conducive both to your users and search robots and that you ensure that an appropriate number of relevant sites link to your pages using your keywords in their link text. Simple? Yes. Easy? No. Quick? Absolutely not!