Google-eyed: Eurovision flop fails to dampen interest

WHAT do the Irish search for most online and what key words are our internetters clicking on?

Perhaps the word ‘fashion’? Or ‘GAA’? or how about ‘rugby’? How about ‘nookie’?

Not a bit of it. Our greatest passion is none other than the annual twee jamboree known as the Eurovision. We didn’t make the final but, if the topics that piqued our interest during May show anything, the public is still fascinated by the Eurovision Song Contest, with both ‘Eurovision 2009’ and ‘eurovision’ among the most searched for terms in Google.

Despite the Lions rugby tour to South Africa and the GAA championships, sporting interests were focused on the Volvo ocean race and the European golf tour. The Irish Open was won by 22-year-old amateur Shane Lowry, which sparked a spike of searches on the Offaly man’s name.

The wait for Star Trek fans came to an end last month and interest in Star Trek searches increased by 140% when the Starship Enterprise graced the big screen with the release of the new movie.

For students, the Leaving Cert is finally here and many have been online in preparation. Searches for ‘examinations’ are up 70% over the past 30 days. People are also searching for ‘examinations.ie’ (up 100%) as they look for timetables and other information.

The Irish obsession with the weather continues (up 70%) and maybe the current sunshine is making us all less fraught about the recession, but searches for ‘euromillions’ still increased by 50% as many of us were still hoping for a bit of luck!

Meanwhile, the battle of the search engines continues with the launch of Microsoft’s Bing, which joins the web’s big-hitters, Google and Yahoo, in their mission to help users navigate the web’s resources.

The computer giant hopes the new search engine, which updates its old MSN search, will help it gain a bigger share of the market. Google currently takes 64%, Yahoo 20% and Microsoft, despite being the biggest player in the software market, a paltry 8.2%.

But now, it seems, Google has increased competition. Another search engine, with the unlikely name of Wolfram Alpha, has been created by the team behind Mathematica, to take on the big boys.

Last summer, Irishman Tom Costello, a computing graduate of Trinity College Dublin, and his wife Anna Patterson, a former Google employee, launched Cuill, later spelled Cuil. After a good beginning, the search engine failed to impress and Google still leads the way.