Today's topic comes from cheerful user J.P. Elliott of Irvine, California, who writes: "What about fast food?"
We've scanned the top 100,000 Lycos user queries from early March for the names of fast food restaurants. The results, from the most-searched-for joints to the least, are below.
Each entry has a percentage ranking based on all fast food searches. The 11.1% ranking of Pizza Hut means that for every 1000 people who searched for a fast food restaurant by name, 111 searched for Pizza Hut.
The full list:
23.9% McDonalds
15.6% Starbucks
11.1% Pizza Hut
8.3% KFC
7.2% Burger King
6.4% Taco Bell
5.6% Domino's Pizza
3.4% Taco Bell dog
3.0% Krispy Kreme
2.7% Wendys
2.6% Dairy Queen
2.3% Dunkin Donuts
1.8% Arbys
1.3% Baskin Robbins
0.9% Papa John's Pizza
0.8% Chick-Fil-A
0.7% Boston Market
0.6% White Castle
0.6% TCBY
0.6% Little Caesar's
0.6% Hardees
Did Not Qualify: A&W, Blimpie, Carl's Jr., Fatburger, In-and-Out Burger, Seattle's Best Coffee, Taco Time.
Subway, Kenny Rogers and Roy Rogers restaurants couldn't be ranked because of confusion with their namesakes. And yes, we know: Starbucks is a coffee shop, not a fast food restaurant. We just thought it would be fun to include.
Congratulations are in order for a few ad agencies. The Taco Bell Chihuahua itself ranked #8 among all fast food queries. (Fellow icons Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders didn't appear.) Add the dog to queries for the restaurant and Taco Bell ranks #4 among all restaurants. Meanwhile, that 0.6% of searches for Little Caesar's isn't from people searching on the company name; it's from people searching for "pizza pizza."
Break down the searches by primary food type and you get this result:
35.0% Burgers
18.2% Pizza
15.6% Coffee
9.8% Mexican
9.1% Chicken
5.3% Doughnuts
4.5% Dairy Desserts
2.5% Other
Keep an eye on Krispy Kreme: the Southern-fried doughnut haven may not be sweeping the nation, but it has cracked the top 10.
Tomorrow we'll continue this theme by looking at national eat-in franchises, from Outback Steakhouse to Denny's.
Note: all search spellings and variations are included in each restaurant's total; for instance, the McDonald's rank includes searches for McDonald's and mcdonalds.com. This list reflects actual terms entered into our search engine by Lycos users during the week ending March 18; it does not imply endorsement of these restaurants by Lycos. For more restaurant information, we invite you to visit our partners Restaurant Row or check our guide to restaurant chains online.
