Canadians opting to search rather than bookmark
Last Updated: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 | 7:23 PM ET
CBC News
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Google looks to be replacing bookmarks, as four of its top 10 Canadian search terms for the year referred to specific websites, with Facebook leading the pack.
The social-networking website was the most searched-for term among Canadians in 2008, according to Google's annual Zeitgeist report, which is broken down into individual countries for the first time this year. Google's own video website, YouTube, ranked second while Hotmail and Yahoo came in seventh and eighth respectively.
The search results indicate that Canadians are using Google to find websites in order to navigate to them, rather than simply bookmarking them.
"Google" itself ranked as the sixth most-searched term, with people using the search engine to find out more about the company's other products, such as Maps, Earth, Street Views and Chrome.
The most searched-for term that wasn't a website in and of itself was "lyrics," which ranked third, followed by "weather" in fourth and "games" at fifth. Rounding out the top 10 were "map" in ninth place and "Canada" at 10th.
Politically, the Greens were the most searched-for party, followed by the Liberals, Conservatives, NDP and Bloc Québécois. Canadians also did their share of gossip gathering, with Britney Spears, Jessica Alba and Heath Ledger ranking as the top three searched-for celebrities.
The fastest rising search in Canada over the past year was "Obama," followed by "Kijiji," which is an online classified ad website, and "Facebook." Those Canadian results differed from the global averages, which were led by "Sarah Palin," "Beijing 2008" and "Facebook login."
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