Celebrity, socialite and reality TV star Kim Kardashian was the most popular search term on Microsoft’s Bing search engine this year, outshining fellow American luminaries Lady Gaga and the U.S. president.
In a year of earthquakes, floods and faltering economies, it seems most people turned to celebrities to relieve the steady flow of grim news. Or looked for ways to save money.
According to Microsoft, the most popular overall 2010 searches on Bing were : 1) Kim Kardashian, 2) Sandra Bullock, 3) Tiger Woods, 4) Lady Gaga, 5) Barack Obama.
The next five most popular search terms were ”hairstyles”, Kate Gosselin, Walmart, Justin Bieber and ”free”, in that order.
Bing still only represents 11.5 percent of U.S. Internet searches — Google is tops with more than 66 percent — but it does show an interesting slice of what is on Web searchers’ minds. It will be interesting to see similar data from Yahoo and Google.
