Once again, the World Cup is the most popular topic on the Internet, with an even bigger lead over #2 Dragonball than it had last week. World Cup Fever also moves soccer searches up to #32, while FIFA, the international soccer federation, enters the list at #41.

Tomorrow, come back to the Lycos 50 for a further in-depth look at World Cup searches -- where they are coming from, and what they are for.

The World Cup is just one of many sports-related topics on this week's list. At #18, you'll find the heavyweight title match between Mike Tyson (#18) and champion Lennox Lewis. The Tyson ranking combines searches for Tyson with those for both fighters together. Despite being the champ, Lewis is so much less popular than Tyson that if you add searches for him to the Tyson numbers, the ranking doesn't change.

Boxing almost made the Lycos 50 on its own (it was #52), and Tyson-Lewis wasn't the only match to make waves on the Lycos search logs. While the fight doesn't make the Lycos 50, we got a lot of searches for the Hasim Rahman-Evander Holyfield bout from June 1. That fight was stopped in the eighth round when a blood clot on Rahman's head swelled up to the size of a baseball. The strange photo of that inflated head also inflated Rahman searches.

If boxing and soccer aren't enough, this week also saw baseball (#10) searches multiply thanks to interest in the annual amateur draft, NBA (#16) searches climb because of the Finals, and the always-popular NFL (#44) return to the list even in the offseason. To top it off, War Emblem's shot at horse racing's Triple Crown put the Belmont Stakes (#36) on the list, and tennis' French Open just missed at #51.

What a sports week! Lycos has never been so happy to have FOX Sports as our sports partner online.

TAPE DELAY: Searches for the controversial R. Kelly (#3) had fallen off our list recently, but this week the scandalized R&B singer returns to the Lycos 50 at his highest position ever. Web users seeking information on Kelly's arrest for child pornography drive the searches, but most of those queries seek out the video of Kelly and the allegedly 16-year-old girl at the focus of the story.

Another video is almost as popular online, and even more divisive: the video of the execution of reporter Daniel Pearl (#11) by Pakistani militants. More than any topic we've ever dealt with, the Pearl video demonstrates an axiom of the Lycos 50: searches for news stories intensify when there is graphic or controversial video involved. Prior to this week, the video was not available through any conventional media websites; you had to search for it and find underground sites that often changed hosts and web addresses.

That changed this week when the Boston Phoenix (#20), an alternative newsweekly, posted a link to the video on its homepage. The link is understandably marked "extremely graphic." Many in the world of journalism have taken sides on this monumental decision by the Phoenix, and the debate has surged across the Web for a week. While the opinion-makers debate, however, many average Web users do want to see the video (for whatever reasons, be they patriotic or sordid), and searches for both the video and the Phoenix are high this week.

AUTO PILOT: It's not the most surprising thing to ever show up on the Lycos 50 (that would be the 2001 All Your Base craze, easily) but boy were we shocked to see the Honda Pilot debut on the Lycos 50 at #50.

Only once before, with the 2000 launch of Chrysler's PT Cruiser, has an individual car model made the Lycos 50. The Pilot was officially launched last week; it has a $30 million advertising campaign behind it, and it got a very good review in USA Today.

But new car models come out all the time, and we can't figure out what is making this one so popular. The BMW Mini Cooper, for example, is also brand new with a big ad campaign, and it gets less than half as many searches as the Honda Pilot. You can check out Pilot info at Lycos Autos.

WWE WATCH: Tracking the name change of America's favorite wrestling promotion, old name WWF stands at 52 percent, new name WWE at 48 percent. Last week, WWF had 56 percent. WWE searches will probably pass WWF searches next week.

SHORT SUBJECTS: Avril Lavigne, subject of a May 15 One to Watch, released her album Let Go last week and finishes #56... For some reason, Sailor Moon almost pops back on the Lycos 50 at #54... The hottest new computer game is Medal of Honor: Frontline, which ranks #63.

NEW THIS WEEK: R. Kelly, Mike Tyson, Boston Phoenix, Father's Day, Belmont Stakes, FIFA, Ashanti, NFL, Honda Pilot.

DROPOUTS: World War II (after 15 weeks), September 11 (after 12 weeks), graduation, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Martha Stewart, Miss Universe, Oprah Winfrey, Anna Nicole Smith, Chandra Levy.

ONE YEAR AGO: Five different file-swapping services were on the Lycos 50, led by Napster at #5. Napster is now off the list, as are Gnutella and iMesh. Audiogalaxy (#39) has stuck around, and Morpheus (#17) has been replaced as the #1 file-swapping search by KaZaA (#6).

TOMORROW: More on the World Cup.