As the year draws to a close, it's time again to look at lists compiling details of the past 12 months. An interesting one is the Yahoo! Buzz "Year in Review 2008", which lists the year's top ten searches (via Yahoo!, anyway).

While the list is mainly made up of what you'd expect - celebrities, politicians, sports - there's a little surprise tucked away at #5. Apparently, people wanted to know more about RuneScape than they did about Jessica Alba, Lindsay Lohan or Angelina Jolie.

To explain how it all works, we go to Yahoo! themselves:

To come up with the Yahoo! Year in Review, our editors analyze search queries based upon a number of factors, including absolute volume and growth versus previous periods, to see which themes and trends bubble to the surface. Of course, individual users and their searches remain anonymous.

Topping the list (again) was one Britney Spears who, it's fair to say, had a bit of a tumultuous year. She beat the soap opera that was the WWE, coming in at #2 after wrestling's boost in popularity following a June explosion that destroyed a stage and 'injured' the chairman, Vince McMahon.

Educated searchers voted President-elect Barack Obama into #3, perhaps due in part to his online strategy, set to make him "the first wired president". While it's good to see someone popular for their politics rather than their performance, it's right back into the eye-candy for #4 - Miley Cyrus. She started the year better known for her Disney character, Hannah Montana, but after a scandalous magazine spread, the 16-year-old enjoyed runaway popularity under her own name.


...and then came RuneScape. It's not the most-popular game in the world, it's not the fastest-selling game in the world, but - in 2008 - it's the game that most people wanted to know about. Why? It could be the fact that it can run on really low-spec machines, it's cheap, it's fun... it also got a new boss this year, a graphical boost and the introduction of PvP combat, which may have played a part in it. Then, of course, there's that pesky black market where gamers trade real-world cash for RuneScape gold. Take the good with the bad...


#6 went to Jessica Alba, thanks largely to her wedding and her new baby. Nerds were back in force for #7, searching for details on anime/manga/game Naruto. The "awkward but accomplished" Ninja graduate gets a prize for being the internet's most popular fictional character (it helps when your name's the title of the franchise!).

Lindsay Lohan stumbled up to #8, with a year full of ups and downs - we're not sure if more people were looking for her triumphs or her tragedies. Angelina Jolie, however, at #9 had a great 2008 - releasing a swag of box office-smash films, donating piles of cash to charity, and even giving birth to twins!

Finally, the #10 most-searched-for topic in 2008? American Idol. They also had a year of surprises - claiming their best-ever singers while observing some of their worst-ever ratings. After all that, the show managed to suck it up and beat the critics - with an impressive final and a winner who smashed iTunes records.

So - surprised? You may be even more interested to know that while Naruto has fallen from #4 to #7, RuneScape has actually risen from #7 to #5! ...if these trends continue, I wonder if we'll see gaming knocking singing starlets from their perch in 2009! (Oh, we can dream...)