Spurred on by the beginning of our counterassault against terrorism, the Lycos 50 team (read: the irreplaceable Doug Beeferman) ran some early numbers for this week, consisting of searches from Sunday through noon Tuesday. What we found was astonishing: searches for our bombing of Afghanistan were lower than we expected.
We compared the numbers from the last two days to the two days following the September 11 attacks, and the interest in the counteroffensive seems to be much smaller. CNN searches are only 10 percent of what they were from September 11-13, and other searches for news are similar. The rate of news and CNN searches has doubled from last week, however.
Searches that specify the bombing are minimal over the last two days. The phrase attack on Afghanistan got fewer searches than Bart Simpson. The phrase Kabul bombing got fewer searches than the forgotten Australian band Midnight Oil.
Perhaps people weren't searching because there wasn't much to see from the bombing, except for those dark screens from Kabul with little green pings of light. CNN coverage looked like film of a Missle Command machine from the corner pizza joint, circa 1982. CBS and FOX found this visual so unexciting that they showed football instead. Tennessee Titans fans called their local affiliate and asked to have the war coverage back.
Now for contrary data: there are indications that interest in the attack on Afghanistan is significant, just using more basic phrases. Searches for just Afghanistan are up to about double the rate that they were last week. Searches for just the word war are up 80 percent.
The one new term that is up big is Al-Jazeera, the Arab all-news network. Over the past two days Al-Jazeera has received more searches than Lycos 50 mainstays like the WWF and Pamela Anderson. It's still not close to CNN, but it is getting more searches than ABC, FOX, or CBS and about as many as MSNBC.
The other topic that seems to be on everybody's mind is closer to home than the bombing in Kabul. Based on early numbers, anthrax seems poised to finish next week at #1 or #2 on the Lycos 50. In two days it has received more than twice as many queries as it did all of last week.
TOMORROW: Which summer stars have staying power?
