When fighting in the Middle East first sparked in October, we expressed shock that more people weren't searching for news on the hostilities. The combined searches for Israel, Palestine, and other terms associated with the conflict (such as middle east conflict) reached #30 on the Lycos 50, then #32 and #42 before dropping off the list.
Nearly a year later, what's more interesting is that, as the conflict has dragged on, searches have never even come close to re-entering the Lycos 50. Just as the combatants seem resigned to the idea that the fighting will not cease for some time, Lycos searchers seem uninterested in searching for information on the fighting.
Last week's atrocities did rekindle interest in the region. Searches for the terrorist group Hamas doubled. Israel searches were 50 percent over the week before. Yet, even with that boost, Israel searches last week were less than half what they were in late October.
Here are last week's top searches related to the Israel-Palestine conflict:
1) Israel
2) Jerusalem Post
3) Palestine
4) Jerusalem
5) Middle East
6) Hamas
7) Israel news
8) Sbarro
9) Sharon
10) PLO
We're not sure, of course, if Sharon is a search for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. But even if you don't include searches for just his last name, Sharon gets more than twice as many searches as PLO leader Yasser Arafat.
Sbarro is the name of the pizza place in Jerusalem where last week's terrorist attack took place. It doesn't normally get any searches, but this week it got as many as Latin music star Marc Anthony or Chinese food.
There may be one reason why searches for the conflict don't make the Lycos 50. Many people go straight to Lycos News to get news, or they get headlines from their My Lycos page. That means that searches for news are generally low because people have other ways of getting information besides the search engine.
Nonetheless, we're surprised we don't get more searches from people looking for the history of the conflict, or from students last spring looking for information for school reports. I suppose at this point the day-to-day bombings and killings have just become the background noise of international life. They're not as interesting to people as, for example, a missing intern who slept with her congressman.
TOMORROW: Maybe, just maybe, the hit of the fall TV season.
