For my final post on the top search terms of 2006, I thought it would be fun to look at the ‘one-hit wonders’ of search – strange discoveries or events that drove people to search more information for a week or two, then were forgotten. Like the celebrity queries my previous post, these queries made it to the top 200 overall search terms during their peak week. I put ‘ipod’ on the chart as a point of comparison – ‘ipod’ is generally the most searched for product throughout the year. The fact that the volume of searches for these queries surpassed ‘ipod’ shows just how significant they were in capturing the public’s attention for a short time. Oddly, all of these search events occurred in the first half of the year.

• Cyclops kitten – It seemed like a hoax, but was later proved to be real.
• Human quadrupeds – the BBC showed a documentary on a Turkish family who mostly traversed on all fours.
• Assassin spiders – a new species of spider was discovered in Madagascar that stab their prey, but are harmless to humans, at only 2mm long.
• The Gospel of Judas – the restored document was unveiled in April and featured in the May issue of National Geographic, shedding new light on the relationship between Jesus and Judas.
• 666 June 6, 2006 was apparently a Satanic day for some.

My guess is the spread of these news items was to some extent viral, and that many of the searches were performed by students. I can only imagine how exciting these findings would be if I was a 14-year-old with a curious mind and an Internet connection. Here’s to search engines for helping to spread knowledge throughout the world!