Stephen Gately is hottest topic on Google’s search list
Stephen Gately, the Boyzone star who died last month, was the hottest topic on Google’s UK site this year.
Google released its annual top search lists yesterday and Gately’s name also featured ninth in the web company’s top ten news search.
Swine flu dominated news searches in 2009, along with Britain’s Got Talent phenomenon Susan Boyle and Jade Goody, who died of cervical cancer this year.
Others in the top news searches included Rihanna, Robert Pattinson, Michael Jackson and Twitter.
After Gately, the hottest terms on Google UK were Microsoft’s Bing search engine, Spotify, Twitter and Lady Gaga.
Google also released a list of the hottest topics for each year of this decade. Gately topped the searches for 2009, while iPhone was the number one for 2007 and prophet Nostradamus was the top topic for 2001.
Hot topics in 2009
1 Stephen Gately
2 Bing
3 Spotify
4 Twitter
5 Lady Gaga
6 1911 census
7 Street view
8 Nokia N97
9 Jade Goody
10 Michael Jackson
Top UK searches 2009
1 Facebook
2 BBC
3 YouTube
4 Hotmail
5 Games
6 eBay
7 News
8 Google
9 Yahoo
10 Bebo
Fastest rising UK search queries
1 Facebook login
2 Jogos
3 eBay uk
4 Yahoo mail
5 Hotmail.com
6 BBC iPlayer
7 Hi5
8 Stephen Gately
9 Bing
10 Spotify
The biggest UK stories (fastest rising news searches)
1 Swine flu
2 Susan Boyle
3 Jade Goody
4 Robert Pattison
5 Rihanna
6 Michael Jackson
7 Google maps
8 Twitter
9 Stephen Gately
10 Iran
UK trends of the decade
2001 Nostradamus
2002 Spiderman
2003 Prince Charles
2004 Big Brother
2005 James Blunt
2006 Steve Irwin
2007 iPhone
2008 BBC iPlayer
2009 Stephen Gately
