Social Networking Websites Are Big Winners in 2008 Google Zeitgeist List

Google's Zeitgeist list of keyword terms reveals more about the psyche of a nation than anything else as serendipity searching becomes a pastime and the latest one reveals a few surprising terms as well as the nation's favourite.

Of the ten most searched terms in UK, 7 refer directly to websites - Facebook, BBC, Youtube, Ebay, Hotmail, Bebo and Yahoo - which highlights the growing habit of internet users to use Google to access websites rather than entering the URL in the address bar (ed: the epitomy of laziness).

The fastest rising terms in UK include the iPlayer, Facebook, the iPhone, Google's own Youtube, yahoo Mail, Obama, the CERN's LHC. Three other search terms are rather obscure one.

Friv apparently points to a free gaming website, Cam4 is a free webcam chat list while Jogos points to a list of Spanish websites (although it also brings up the Official Website of the Beijing 2008 Olympic games).

The Global Zeitgeist is heavily skewed towards the US presidential campagin with Sarah Palin making it to the top with Obama in sixth position. Surprisingly, Tuenti, a Spanish social networking website came in fourth and nasza klasa, a Polish social networking platform came in at 7th position while another obscure website, wer kennt wen, turned out to be a German Social network.

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The iPhone, Chinese website Badoo, Facebook and Dailymotion were the fastest rising global search terms last year.