On Monday, we took a look at the new Lycos 50, which was deeply impacted by last week's terrorist attacks on the United States. Half the list consisted of new terms, 24 of which were related to the attacks and the upcoming war against terrorism.
But these 24 terms were not the only war-related terms to grace our search logs. Taking a look at the subjects below the Lycos 50 shows that last week's events not only dominated the top 50 searches on Lycos; they dominated every search on Lycos.
Here are some of the other terms that were highly searched last week:
Our allies in NATO just missed the Lycos 50 at #51. As for our more controversial allies, Israel came in at #53, while India didn't really see searches rise.
Anybody watching an episode of Sportscenter would notice the rise in patriotic song over the last few days. The most popular is "God Bless America" (#52), which has become almost a co-national anthem.
The actual national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner", comes in at #76. That's just below the popular song "Proud to Be an American" by Lee Greenwood, which comes in at #75. That song is also known as, and searched for as, "God Bless the USA." Both of these tunes received more searches last week than either Madonna or Blink-182. Greenwood himself received more searches than Limp Bizkit.
What about "America the Beautiful"? It was about half as popular as these other songs.
As we mentioned Monday, searches tripled for the airplane manufacturer Boeing (#56). Searches for gas prices (#58) looked like they might make the Lycos 50 but they declined midweek when reports of price gouging turned out to be mostly exaggerated.
The most-searched victim of the attacks was conservative commentator Barbara Olson (#63), whose husband Ted is U.S. Solicitor General. Olson was spotlighted since she had called her husband from the plane to report the hijacking. She was on her way to Los Angeles to appear on the show Politically Incorrect and that show is leaving a guest seat open in her memory all week. The other victim to receive a good number of searches was minor actress Berry Berenson.
Many of the searches that were popular at election time were popular again last week, such as news organizations and political sites. Searches for political website The Drudge Report (#69) were up 150 percent. Searches for Rush Limbaugh were up 80 percent.
You may have seen Red Cross at #12 on the Lycos 50, but searches for blood donation were also high, at #78. That includes searches such as blood drive and blood services.
Osama Bin Laden's terrorist organization is called Al-Qaeda (#80). Many people have noticed that this is Arabic for "the base," which has led to a small resurgence in the All Your Base Are Belong To Us craze. I've received a few emails along the lines of "all your Bin Laden are belong to us" or some such thing.
Searches for New York buildings not involved in the terrorist attacks also surged last week. The Empire State Building received about eight times as many searches as usual. Queries related to the Statue of Liberty doubled.
MONDAY: Which news organizations were most popular on Lycos after the terrorist attacks?
