Oops, She Didn't Get It (Top Yahoo! Search Term) Again (Or Did She?)

You'd think with all the mishaps Britney Spears has experienced this year she'd be Yahoo!'s top search term, as she was last year. You'd probably be right, except that Yahoo! has changed the way they ran this "contest of the most searched."

Rather than just top terms, they have a list of "top trends," categories so to speak. The trends for 2007 that Yahoo! has chosen (paraphrased from Yahoo!'s witty pseudo-titles, such as "Grass is always greener" for the environment) are:

• News
• Environment
• Celebrities
• Tech
• Recalls
• Sports
• Send-Offs
• Del.icio.us Top 10
• Yahoo! Kids

The nice thing about this set-up is that Yahoo! can emote (and emote they do! --- with a pretty lengthy discourse on each subject) on each category when you click through to see details.

According to the site, the following was the methodology used:

To come up with the Top Trends of 2007, we analyze search queries based on a number of factors, including absolute volume and growth versus previous periods, to see which themes and trends bubble to the surface.

Of course, Britney was tops in the celebrity category (humorously called "Celebrity Downslides"), followed by Paris, Anna Nicole Smith, Vanessa Hudgens, and Nicole Richie. Strangely, no sign of Lindsay Lohan in the top 10.

In Tech, YouTube, Wikipedia, Facebook, iTunes, and iPod were tops with the iPhone not even showing up until #6.

Assuming we went back to the old format, who/what do you think would be the term on Yahoo! Well, of course I don't know for sure, but based on the amount of trouble she's been in this year (and past popularity), it would probably be Britney, right?

Check out the whole list here.