What terms drove the greatest query volume spike? Let’s take a look at some of the fastest growing terms since this time last year to get a better idea of the trend in consumer search interest.

Findings:

• The upward trend in search as a means of navigation continues. Social networking sites Facebook and Twitter account for a large portion of this growth.
• Yahoo! mail, AOL Mail, Gmail, Hotmail all make it onto the top movers list
• Netflix, ask.com, Comcast.net, TMZ, and Capital One have all at least doubled their query volume over the last year
• Michael Jackson is still on everyone’s mind still receiving over 2 million queries last month
• The fastest growing term was windows live, having less than 80,000 searches last year, last month there were 4.5 million (5588% increase)

Findings:

• With no election this year, queries for presidential candidates Barack Obama, and Sarah Palin have taken a back seat.
• Circuit City’s bankruptcy/liquidation and the subsequent closing all of its stores to exclusively become an online store has resulted in a significant drop in its search power. Surprisingly it still received over 200,000 queries.
• Evidently, Tramadol is no longer the narcotic hot topic.

Social networks are still becoming more and more popular. Based on an announcement this past Tuesday, Facebook has become the worlds largest social networking site with over 300 million worldwide users and is now financially viable, generating enough cash flow to cover all expenses plus the capital to continue expanding. Is Twitter next?

Microsoft Live has experienced considerable growth over the last year and their recent launch of the Bing brand looks to propel them even further.

The next few months should shape up to give an interesting look at the shopping habits of consumers as we near the Christmas season. Will the recession force price conscious consumers to rely on search as a bargain hunting tool? What will be the hottest toys compared with last year? Check back over the next few months to see.

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