They've been on the Lycos 50 every week for two years. They're one of our most talked about topics. But they've never been as high as they are now. The #2 topic on the Internet? What on earth is going on with tattoos?
Actually, not much. The rise of tattoos is actually a result of the drop in some of our other popular topics.
When we first started counting the Lycos 50 in 1999, tattoos stayed in the teens every week. In mid-February 2000 it moved into the top ten, and stayed there until the end of August. Then it was back into the teens until this February, when it went back into the top ten. So the trend was set: tattoos are more popular in the spring and summer, when skin is in, and regress a bit in fall and winter.
But tattoos had never gone above #5 until three weeks ago. Why the sudden extra surge?
Three months ago, on April 10, tattoos were at #7. The six topics above tattoos were:
1) Dragonball
2) The IRS
3) Britney Spears
4) Easter
5) Napster
6) Pokemon
Well, Dragonball is still #1. Easter was a seasonal query. The IRS is understandable, given that this was the week before taxes were due. The other three topics had all been regular members of the top ten for months.
Since then, however, Lycos users have been steadily losing interest in all three topics. Napster, Pokemon, and Britney Spears, when compared to other searches on Lycos, are each down to roughly half the interest they had three months ago. That creates a void, and with nothing ready to fill it right now, tattoos gets to move on up.
In the end, tattoos really aren't any more popular now than they were last year. The high rank for tattoos is a combination of the fact that summertime is the peak for tattoo searches and the fact that other search terms at the top have faded a bit recently.
Can tattoos make it to the top? Last week, despite taking a fall due to the end of the school year, Dragonball searches were nearly double tattoo searches. The current king of the Lycos 50 isn't going down for anything but the strongest of search trends.
Come November and December, we expect tattoos to settle back into the teens. If other topics can move up to replace Napster and Pokemon near the top (hint: Harry Potter), then that will also knock tattoos down a bit.
If you are interested in more information about tattoo searches, check out this in-depth article we wrote on the subject last year. Specific types of tattoo searches really haven't changed much since then.
You can also check out the very popular clubs on Lycos Communities and this great How Stuff Works article on tattoos at Lycos Zone.
