This was a good week to be a woman online.
Four women join this week's Lycos 50: old-time favorites Oprah Winfrey, Martha Stewart, and Anna Nicole Smith, plus newcomer clubs. That makes a total of 11 women on this week's Lycos 50 -- 22% of the entire list.
Here are more details on this week's rankings:
CHA-CHING! For once it's not about the photos: pinup queen Anna Nicole Smith rockets to #14 this week thanks to the $449 million dollar legal judgment she received last week for her 14-month marriage to oil baron J. Howard Marshall. (That's $32 million per wedded month, if you're counting.)
On the other hand, the popularity of pro wrassler Chyna (#10) is all about the photos. She posed for Playboy magazine this month, creating a predictable stampede of user searches. The search frenzy also boosted Chyna's employer, the WWF, which rises from #13 to #9.
HOLIDAY HOTTIES: Martha Stewart is making her annual holiday season run up the charts, as surfers plan for creative Halloween cookies and those 'gracious' Thanksgiving dinners. Halloween itself hits #2 this week and looks poised to grab #1 as the Olympics fade. Christmas (#20 already) continues its early rise.
Rosh Hashana is the week's third-ranked holiday at #39. That's a distinct improvement over last year, when the holiday didn't make the Lycos 50 at all. Columbus Day and Thanksgiving were a distant fourth and fifth in the week's holiday derby.
COSTUMES? Yes, costumes are #33. They're hugely popular online this year, as we noted a few weeks back. This week the traffic logs showed an odd new favorite: pirate costumes. Look for Long John Silver at a party near you. (And you can order costumes at LycoShop, don't you know.)
OLYMPIC WRAP-UP Pole-vaulter Tatiana Grigorieva is this week's Olympic fan favorite, thanks to her silver medal performance at Sydney. Grigorieva is a Russian emigre and part-time model who was profiled in the September 4th Sports Illustrated, which no doubt gave her an extra boost. (She chatted on Lycos last week -- see the transcript clubs.)
Last week's favorite athletes, Svetlana Khorkina and Ian "the Thorpedo" Thorpe, dropped off our list entirely. The week's top 5 Olympic athletes overall: Grigorieva, US sprinter Marion Jones, Khorkina, Russian gymnast Alexei Nemov, and Thorpe.
SHORT SUBJECTS: RU 486, the newly approved "abortion pill," drew strangely little interest online last week. The pill drew about 30% as much interest as #50 Martha Stewart... Pokemon continues its slow fade, landing this week at #12... seven months later and we still get hundreds of searches a week for Jennifer Lopez's Grammy dress... Greek mythology (#45) was no flash in the pan: it's on our list for the second straight week... Can the scooter craze be over already? Last week scooters were at #21 after nine straight weeks on our list. This week they drop off the charts completely. Maybe scooters won't be the hot gift for Christmas 2000 after all.
NEW THIS WEEK: Anna Nicole Smith, Tatiana Grigorieva, the 2000 elections (#32), costumes, Rosh Hashana, study favorite capital punishment (#40), resurgent band Limp Bizkit (#41), Oprah Winfrey, Martha Stewart.
DROPOUTS: Scooters, Shakespeare, Carmen Electra, South Park, Svetlana Khorkina, Cindy Margolis, Ian Thorpe, Paula Yates, Cliff Notes.
BIGGEST RISE: Chyna, up 36 spots to #10.
BIGGEST DROP: Video game Diablo II, down 14 spots to #42.
CAMPAIGN WATCH: In our weekly comparison of campaign 2000 searches, Al Gore queries are leading George Bush queries by 54% to 46%. That's a 1 point gain for Bush, who trailed 55-45% last week.
