December 01, 2010, 10:49 AM — Apple's iPad and iPhone dominated AOL's list of year-end hot shopping search terms, though technology terms had a fairly weak showing on AOL's overall hot searches list, which beats the rush of year-end trend reports by coming out at the end of November.
[ See also: Yahoo's Top Searches of 2010 ]
AOL, which registers millions of searches daily, found Apple's iPad and iPhone to be the top two shopping search terms for 2010. The top 10 list also included the RIM BlackBerry Torch, Amazon Kindle and Motorola Droid X smartphone - not to mention the very untechie Brazilian Blowout and Girl Scout Cookies.
Also read: 6 sets of useful Apple iPad resources
For overall news searches, technology barely registered, unless you count the WikiLeaks website, which of course is back in the news this week for releasing its latest round of cables and for being blocked by China. The BP oil spill was the most searched on news term.
The voyeuristic Chatroulette website was the second most popular "trend" search terms, finishing only behind actress Betty White, whose career was given a boost from a candy commercial and a subsequent Saturday Night Live appearance. Chatroulette first surfaced in late 2009, but exploded to start 2010. The site went down in August, but returned with some minor upgrades. The Old Spice Guy, which proved to be a social marketing hit, also was among the top 10 trend searches.
Other top search terms by categories included Tiger Woods (celebrities), bedbugs (health), Alice in Wonderland (movies), curling (winter Olympic events) and Gary Coleman (RIP celebrities).
AOL itself has no doubt been searched on many times this year as well, as the company has had a busy year getting into everything from online discount services to content creation, such as through its TechCrunch buyout.
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