Micheal Jackson, Twitter and swine flu were a few of the most queried terms across the major search engines this year.
The singer's death prompted enough searches that his name danced its way to the top of Google's fastest rising chart and Yahoo and Bing's overall searches.
"As millions of fans said goodbye to the King of Pop, Michael Jackson led the list of our top 10 fastest rising queries across the globe," Google's vice president of user experience Marissa Mayer wrote in a blog post.
Twitter also captured the attention of online searchers, picking up the fifth spot in Google's ranking, and second on Bing.
"This year's Zeitgeist also confirms that the social web is alive and well," noted Mayer.
Swine flu ranked third for Bing and topped the US rising chart for Google. "In fact, in the US, swine flu was searched even more than another major event of the year: the inauguration of President Obama," Mayer said.
Bing's most searched terms for 2009
1) Michael Jackson
2) Twitter
3) Swine Flu
4) Stock Market
5) Farrah Fawcett
6) Patrick Swayze
7) Cash for Clunkers
8) Jon and Kate Gosselin
9) Billy Mays
10) Jaycee Dugard
Google's fastest rising global terms for 2009
1) michael jackson
2) facebook
3) tuenti
4) twitter
5) sanalika
6) new moon
7) lady gaga
8) windows 7
9) dantri.com.vn
10) torpedo gratis
Yahoo's top search terms for 2009
1) Michael Jackson
2) Twilight
3) WWE
4) Megan Fox
5) Britney Spears
6) Naruto
7) American Idol
8) Kim Kardashian
9) NASCAR
10) Runescape
