Hitwise Intelligence - LeeAnn Prescott - US
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February 01, 2007
Celebrity Gossip - Top Searches of 2006
Yesterday I looked at the top search terms of 2006 by navigational and generic queries, and today I'll take a look into the top celebrity searches of 2006. All of of the search queries examined in this post were among the top 200 searches overall during their respective 'big hit' weeks, and can tell us a bit about the flow of the celebrity news that captures public's attention.
Britney Spears was by far the celebrity who generated the most news in 2006: another child, an impending divorce, and an unfortunate lack-of-wardrobe incident brought her to the top of the search charts. I am not including her in this analysis, because if you put her name on the chart below, the early December spike in searches would dwarf the volume of searches for all the other celebrities on this list, and I already covered it here.
Below is a chart of the biggest celebrity 'blips' on the search charts for 2006.
- Chris Daughtry - being voted off American Idol made him more popular with searchers than winning American Idol did for Taylor Hicks. Now he's got a hit album.
- David Blaine - his 'drowned alive' experiment got him a lot of attention, but his 'revolution' experiment in November barely made a blip on the search charts.
- Aishwarya Rai - being rumored to be dead is a great way to get attention if you're a Bollywood star.
- Star Jones - lost weight, left The View, and divorce rumors abounded.
- Lance Bass - the former 'N Sync start came out of the closet. Searches for his boyfriend, Reichen Lehmkuhl, also surged in the same period. They have since broken up.
- Mel Gibson - drunk driving again? Get a chauffeur!
- Anna Nicole Smith - sadly, her son died. She also had an illegitimate child. People still want to see pictures of her.
- Sara Evans - the singer left Dancing with the Stars, citing personal reasons relating to her divorce from politician Craig Schelske.
- Michael Richards - racist rants are not good publicity, especially when they are posted on YouTube.
- Katie Rees - posing for photos when you're drunk is not a good idea if you want to be Miss USA, but great if you want millions of horny men looking at your pictures.
There doesn't appear to be much difference in the nature of the hot celebrity stories in 2006 versus past years, but where people got the news from greatly influenced by celebrity gossip blogs (covered here and here) , as well as YouTube in the case of Michael Richards.
Posted by LeeAnn Prescott at 02:35 PM
Posted to Search
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