It has now been exactly one year since Britney Spears' last album hit stores. Now, after spending three years near the top of the Lycos 50, Britney is finally falling down the list. Is the Britney era over?

One year ago, Britney was #6 on the Lycos 50, behind two terrorism-related searches, two Halloween-related searches, and Dragonball. Now she's #15, behind three Halloween-related searches and a number of other terms. With the exception of the first two weeks after September 11, this is the lowest that Britney has ever stood on our chart.

For the first three years of the Lycos 50, most musical acts rose and fell depending on how current their records were. Britney was the one exception; not only was she the most popular artist, she was the one who stayed at the same level of popularity no matter whether she had a record out or not. But no longer.

When you look closer, though, you may be surprised. This chart compares Britney Spears searches over the past year. The number given is the percentage of searches in the first week of each month compared to Britney searches one year ago.

Feb. 2002: 96 %
May 2002: 73%
Aug. 2002: 63%
Sep. 2002: 52%
Oct. 2002: 33%
Nov. 2002: 48%

So, as you can see, Britney Spears searches have actually rebounded a bit in the past month. Her long gradual decline during 2002 hasn't been easy to see on the Lycos 50 because Britney was getting so many searches for so long. Even when she fell in popularity, she was getting more searches than all but a few topics.

In the last two months, however, a number of hot topics have passed Britney -- mostly holiday-related and news-related, although the current status of Christina Aguilera is part of it as well. So while Britney has actually rebounded a bit in the last month, this rebound has been masked by all of the timely topics that have passed her on the Lycos 50.

Searches for pictures of Britney have fallen more steeply than searches for Britney herself. Britney picture seaches are down about 60 percent from last year at this time, while Britney Spears searches in total are only down about half.

After Christmas, when the holiday searches are gone, Britney may be back in the top ten. But she certainly is no longer at quite the level of popularity she has enjoyed for the past three years. Maybe she should try getting naked -- hey, it's working for Christina.

TOMORROW: Be aware of Ad-aware.