Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY -- Google released its list of the most popular search terms of 2011 Tuesday. Or sort of the most popular. This year, Google opted to use "fastest rising" and "fastest falling" as indicators, rather than total searches, a move that is says gives a better read on quickly changing trends.
The list is, not surprisingly, dominated by Apple products and people. But there are a few interesting (and annoying) searches to be seen at the top of the world's largest search engine.
Apple had three of the top ten slots on Goggle's global fastest rising list. The as-yet nonexistent iPhone5 came in at number five, showing how desperately Apple fans need that next awesome product. "Steve Jobs" and "iPad2" came in at nine and ten respectively.
2. Google+
3. Ryan Dunn
4. Casey Anthony
5. Battlefield 3
6. iPhone5
7. Adele
8. 東京 電力 (Tepco)
9. Steve Jobs
10. iPad2
Perhaps the most annoying search on the list was also the first: "Rebecca Black" came in at number one, to everyone's chagrin. Black garnered fame and infamy early in 2011 with her viral YouTube music video "Friday" that had the world pounding their skulls to get that infectious song out of their heads.
The biggest loser of the year, topping of the fastest falling searches list, was Myspace, which earlier in the year cut half of it's staff has generally become the least important social media site that everyone still seems to know about anyway.
Herman Cain, the now defunct presidential candidate, topped the fastest rising political figures list, but his restaurant chain, Godfather's Pizza, didn't do quite as well: Fast food chain Wendy's topped the global food and drink search list.
The search engine releases data on it's searches at the end of every year in a project it calls Goggle Zeitgeist. This year's list is highly interactive, allowing the reader to click on each list and see data from each week, and even view whole histories of trends throughout the year. It also has dozens of lists broken down by category, region, and topic.
The site, fortunately, does not appear to play the song "Friday" at any point, which we can all be grateful for.
Email: [dnewlin@ksl.com](<mailto: dnewlin@ksl.com>)
