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Thursday, December 11, 2008

It's that time of year to see what everyone has been searching for online in 2008 and it looks as if the global financial crisis, British banks, cupcake recipes and the BBC's catch-up TV service have been has dominated searches.

Residents of Stevenage performed more google.co.uk searches for money-saving coupons than any other city in the UK, while the residents of Farnborough in Hampshire searched more frequently for information about the credit crunch than any other town. Searches for Icesave, the beleaguered Icelandic bank, were performed more often by the people of Watford than anywhere else in the country, while Google users in London were preoccupied with credit default swaps, the method used by financial organisations to transfer third-party credit risks between themselves.

Liverpudlians searched for "sub prime" more than residents in any other city in the UK, while the prudent inhabitants of Milton Keynes searched most often for "savings" and those in Gloucester for "ISAs". In Belfast, it was a different story, however, with residents more likely to search for "sales" than people in any other UK city, while the residents of Croydon searched for "shopping" more than people in any other town.

Facebook was the most popular overall search term for the second year running, followed by the BBC, YouTube and eBay. Games was the fifth most popular search, underlining the growing popularity of online gaming websites such as Friv and Jogos, which were also among the fastest rising search terms of the year.

Ten most popular search terms