The Summer Olympics are the most popular news story of 2000, according to searches by Lycos users.
Quite an upset for the Olympics to garner more searches than the historic presidential election. News organizations reported that Americans had less interest in the Olympics this year than in years past. The United States didn't fare as well as expected, the TV coverage was pathetic, and there were no real breakout personalities. The election, on the other hand, dominated news coverage all year and obliterated all other news for 36 days. Yet the Olympics were more popular with online searchers.
THE TOP 20:
1. clubs
2. Election 2000
3. Firestone Tire Recall
4. Elian Gonzalez
5. Florida Recount
6. Columbine Anniversary
7. Euro 2000
8. I Love You Virus
9. Tour de France
10. Concorde Crash
11. Human Genome Project
12. Y2K
13. Pitt-Aniston Wedding
14. John Rocker Controversy
15. Verizon Strike
16. Subway Series
17. Presidential Debates
18. Israel-Palestine Conflict
19. Super Bowl XXXIV
20. Submarine Kursk
POWER OF SPORTS: The power of the Summer Olympics shows that big sports events generate huge interest online, much more than other news stories. The popularity of the Euro 2000 soccer tourney is particularly interesting given that roughly 80% of Lycos searches come from North America.
A total of six items in our Top 20 are sports-related, eight if you count the way TV news covered the election.
POINTLESS SEARCHES: Y2K finishes at #12 despite the fact that the crisis-that-never-was ended on January 1.
DEAD POOL 2000: No celebrity deaths make the list this year; the highest interest was in the passing of former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau (#22).
STRANGELY ABSENT: It made the Lycos 50 for two weeks, but there really was no lasting interest in the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole (#25).
Monday we'll feature our last individual list, The Web's Top Sports Stars of 2000. Then Wednesday we reveal the total Top 50 for 2000.
Note: These rankings reflect all terms entered into the Lycos search engine by users between January 1 and November 30, 2000, except for Election 2000 and Florida Recount, which are estimated with the inclusion of December searches. All spellings and search variations are included in these totals: for instance, searches for Sydney 2000 and Sidney Olympics are counted as searches for the Summer Olympics. Some searches are estimated based on increased interest during periods of news; for example, the rise in searches for Jerusalem and Palestine during the current crisis is used to estimate total searches for Israel-Palestine Conflict. For more details about how we create these lists, please see our Lycos 50 FAQ.
