Although Halloween finally moves into the top slot this week, bioterrorism fears continue to sweep the Internet.
There's no question that Halloween is hot, as it is every year at this time. Costumes move up to #5 this week, and pumpkins move up to #24 with plenty of searches for pumpkin carving and jack o' lanterns.
Scarier than Halloween, however, are biological agents that could be used to attack America. Anthrax remains at #3 this week. The possible next attack agent, smallpox, debuts on the Lycos 50 at #17. Cipro, the now famous antibiotic, debuts at #40 as searches increase 65 percent. And the Center for Disease Control is the latest government agency to nearly make the Lycos 50, finishing at #55.
Interestingly enough, other queries related to the war on terrorism have been falling. Afghanistan (#12), Al-Jazeera (#48), and Islam (#27) all dropped this week. Generic terrorism (#19) queries continued to fall slowly as well.
Taliban (#26) searches are also dropping but, like searches for Osama Bin Laden (#2), many searches are now for humorous responses to our enemies. Popular searches this week included "The Taliban Song" and this Taliban singles ad.
WORLD SERIES: Last year at World Series time, both the New York Mets and New York Yankees made the Lycos 50. We'll have to wait until next week to see if this year's Series is as popular, but so far on Lycos the American League has it all over the National League. Comparing the baseball final four, the Seattle Mariners (44 percent) and Yankees (39 percent) get a lot more searches than the Atlanta Braves (12 percent) and Arizona Diamondbacks (5 percent).
FREE LUNCH, NOT: Audiogalaxy (#20) is the latest online file transfer service to begin charging a user fee. They claim that high server loads will require that they begin charging in January 2002. The news led to more searches for Audiogalaxy. Will it maintain its spot as the #2 most-searched file transfer software on Lycos, despite no longer being gratis?
SHORT SUBJECTS: Harry Potter (#13) is making its move on the top ten with the movie less than a month away? Also climbing fast: the soon-to-debut (Thursday, actually) Windows XP (#16)? Searches for wicca and witchcraft both seem to be smaller than on Halloweens past? Neither sleet nor snow nor bioterrorism can stop Christmas (#10) from arriving in the top ten with more than two months to go.
NEW THIS WEEK: Smallpox, Cipro, Blink-182, IRS, Michael Jackson.
DROPOUTS: Gas masks, Playstation 2, Bert is Evil, Rush Limbaugh, Christopher Columbus.
BIGGEST RISE: Windows XP, up 18 places to #16.
BIGGEST DROP: FBI, down 29 places to #41.
TOMORROW: The Xbox update.
