Yesterday we ranked fast food restaurants online. Today we turn our attention to eat-in restaurant chains.
We've scanned the top 100,000 Lycos user queries from early March for the names of franchise restaurants. The results, from the most-searched-for franchises to the least, are below.
Each entry has a percentage ranking based on all fast food searches. The 7.7% ranking of Olive Garden means that for every 1000 people who searched for a restaurant chain by name, 77 searched for Olive Garden.
The full list:
21.1% Hooters
12.2% Hard Rock Cafe
12.0% Outback Steakhouse
8.5% Planet Hollywood
7.7% Olive Garden
6.2% Chuck E. Cheese
5.7% Denny's
5.6% Applebee's
4.9% Cracker Barrel
4.6% Rainforest Cafe
4.1% TGI Friday's
2.6% Chili's
2.6% Macaroni Grill
2.2% Red Lobster
Did Not Qualify: El Torito, Bob Evans, Shoney's, Carrows, Pizzeria Uno, Round Table Pizza, Rock Bottom, Roadhouse Grill, Tony Roma's, Bugaboo Creek, Bob's Big Boy, IHOP.
Big surprises: Outback Steakhouse is quite the powerhouse. (Must be all those confounded radio ads.) The Macaroni Grill seems to be doing well for a fairly new chain. But whatever happened to Red Lobster?
Not such a big surprise: Hooters. In case you're wondering, due the myriad meanings of the word we ignored searches for just "hooters" and counted only searches for "Hooters restaurant," "Hooters.com" and the like. This puts the chain at a slight comparative disadvantage, but it seems to have done fine nonetheless.
Combine yesterday's list with today's and you get this top 8:
1. McDonald's
2. Starbucks
3. Pizza Hut
4. KFC
5. Burger King
6. Taco Bell
7. Hooters
8. Domino's Pizza
In other words: fast food joints are a lot more popular with web users than sit-down chain restaurants. Why? We don't know. (Why does anyone search for "McDonald's" in the first place? To check the menu?) But this could be one more indication that the web audience is still a very young audience.
Note: all search spellings and variations are included in each restaurant's total; for instance, the Denny's rank includes searches for Dennys and Denny's restaurants. 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.
