It takes a major public event to jump from nowhere to #2 in one week -- and that's just what happened with the NCAA basketball tournament, AKA March Madness.
Surfers just couldn't get enough info as this year's tournament got underway on March 16. (It runs until April 3rd.) After general queries for NCAA basketball tournament (and for March Madness itself), surfers wanted one thing: brackets, brackets, brackets. Then came tournament picks and pools, giving you some indication of where all this online data was leading. Also popular were scores, tickets, and Final Four.
Other key points from this week's Lycos 50:
PAR-TAY! Spring Break (#23) finally hits the Lycos 50 after creeping up for weeks. Two spring break destinations were specifically mentioned among the top 50,000 queries: spring break Cancun and spring break Lake Havasu. (Lake Havasu?) Also popular were Black Spring Break, the annual event in Daytona Beach, and its Atlanta cousin Freaknik. And MTV Spring Break is getting a lot of searches -- but we haven't counted those in the spring break total.
THRASHIN': Skateboarding debuts at #31 this week after rising nearly 50% in the past six weeks. We presume this is a seasonal rise, like baseball or golf, rather than an indication of a more fad-like rise in interest; but who knows? By far the most popular queries are simply skateboards and skateboarding, with skateboard tricks a distant third.
ST. PATRICK'S DAY peaks (we assume) at #5 this week, after rising 14 places in each of the past two weeks. The holiday also pushed Ireland (#41) into the top 50. Strange statistic: nearly 7% of all St. Patricks-related searches this week were for shamrocks, especially shamrock pictures and shamrock clip art.
Meanwhile, Mardi Gras is showing strange staying power. Even though Fat Tuesday ended things two weeks ago, queries for Mardi Gras still ranked #17 this week. Just nostalgia, or are we missing something?
#30 WITH A BULLET: Stephen King makes his first-ever appearance on the Lycos 50 this week, thanks to the hubbub over his online story Riding the Bullet. The novella, King's first since he was clobbered by a wayward van last summer, was made available as a downloadable e-book last Tuesday. King's publisher reported that 400,000 people asked to download the book in the first 24 hours.
SHORT SUBJECTS: Science Fair Projects drops from our list this week after a steady 10-week run... Japanimation import Gundam Wing continues its impressive showing, moving up to #14 in its second week on our charts... what is The Sims (#42)? It's a new PC game from the makers of Sim City... searches for ESPN nearly doubled this week, presumably due to March Madness coverage... the NCAA wrestling tournament was also a hot item this week, though it wasn't close to the Lycos 50... other hot queries which didn't quite make the Lycos 50: Ides of March (!), gun control, and the Oscars.
NEW THIS WEEK: March Madness, spring break, Stephen King, skateboarding, Ireland, capital punishment, the Sims.
DROPOUTS: Lent, Science fair projects, the Iditarod, Lolo Ferrari, Cindy Margolis, Star Wars, and (finally) Jennifer Lopez's dress.
BIGGEST RISE: The Census (#27) and St. Patrick's Day (#5), both up 14 places.
BIGGEST DROP: Mardi Gras (#17), down 15 spots.
AND FINALLY: With the presidential nominations all but decided, queries for George W. Bush dropped about 30% this week, with Al Gore dropping 20%. John McCain searches dropped a whopping 73%.
