June 13, 2006 -- Predictably, Google users last week avidly searched for any and all World Cup news. Other sports fans following the horses (Belmont Stakes), tennis (Nicole Vaidisova) and even a U.S. football star (Ben Roethlisberger) made their play for information too. In the political realm, a American pundit (Ann Coulter) and an Iraqi insurgent (Zarqawi) ranked high. But the week's winner for frequency in this list is a baby girl (Shiloh), whose first photos with her mega-watt parents were released around the world.
Below is a summary of the Google Zeitgeist results for the top 15 gainers on Google.com when comparing search queries that have risen by a significant percentage for the week of June 5-12.
For more information, visit the Google Zeitgeist at http://www.google.com/zeitgeist.
Google.com Gainers
1. 2006 world cup - every 4 years, the global football fest triggering much obsessive and raucous behavior kicked off June 2; 32 countries are competing across Germany
2. heather mills - unsavory U.K. tabloid reports continue to surface about Sir Paul McCartney's soon-to-be ex-wife's past exploits (reports say she plans to sue)
3. shiloh - the newest single-name celebrity on the scene was born May 27 in Namibia; the first photos of her with parents Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt appeared in publications last week
4. people magazine - Jolie & Pitt sold the rights of the first photos of Shiloh to Getty Images, with all proceeds going to charity; the weekly People paid a reported $4 million for North American rights, and the photos ran in their June 19 issue (available June 2)
5. zarqawi - al-Qaeda Iraqi leader Abu Musab Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. aerial attack on June 8
6. ann coulter - controversial conservative pundit has drawn fire for recent remarks criticizing the widows of 9/11; she will appear on the same"Tonight" Show with left-wing comedian George Carlin June 7
7. billy preston - keyboard player and songwriter sometimes called "The Fifth Beatle" died at age 59 of respiratory complications in Scottsdale, AZ on June 8
8. ben roethlisberger - Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, 24, suffered serious injuries in a motorcycle accident June 12
9. belmont stakes - 3-year-old colt Jazil won the famed final leg in horse racing's Triple Crown on June 10
10. national hurricane center - hurricane season began last week, prompting more searches about Alberto and other brewing storms from this Miami-based arm of the National Weather Service
11. hello magazine - the British equivalent to People Magazine paid for the European rights to the Shiloh photos
12. evolution of dance - YouTube sensation Jason Laipply has gotten a recent round of news stories for busting a move in a popular video clip that has been watched 18 million times since it first appeared in April
13. nicole vaidisova - Czech tennis star reached the semi-finals and improved her overall ranking by beating Venus Williams June 6 at the French Open before losing to Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova
14. janice dickinson - a new reality show premiered on the Oxygen cable channel June 5 starring this model and celebrity aspirant, receiving fairly poor reviews
15. windows vista - a test version of the new Microsoft operating system released last week proved almost too popular for the company's servers, so it has limited download access for the time being
Source: Google
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