World Cup Kicks Star Wars Out of Space
UPDATE: The sporting event scores an online goal – toppling the popular movie from the number one search term.
UPDATE: The sporting event scores an online goal – toppling the popular movie from the number one search term.
“World Cup,” ranked tenth last week, has scored the first place position on the list of the Terra Lycos 50 most popular user searches for the week ending June 1, 2002. Interestingly, the term “soccer” was new to the list, coming in at number 41. “World Cup” replaced “Star Wars,” which has now dropped to the number three spot.
“Dragonball” remains in the second place position, and “tattoos” drops a notch from third to fourth. Rounding out the top five is “Miss Universe” – a new entry to the list largely due to the contest held on May 29, 2002.
The Lycos 50 is compiled from 12 million queries from Internet users on the Lycos Network. Some interesting observations in the week’s searches are:
Lycos 50 for the week ending June 1, 2002 | ||
---|---|---|
Current Position |
Search Term |
Last Week’s Position |
1 | World Cup | #10 |
2 | Dragonball | #2 |
3 | Star Wars | #1 |
4 | Tattoos | #3 |
5 | Miss Universe | New |
6 | Britney Spears | #5 |
7 | Eminem | #8 |
8 | KaZaA | #6 |
9 | Spider-Man | #4 |
10 | Daniel Pearl | #22 |
11 | Pamela Anderson | #11 |
12 | WWE | #11 |
13 | Harry Potter | #31 |
14 | Natalie Portman | #7 |
15 | Morpheus | #13 |
16 | Las Vegas | #14 |
17 | Final Fantasy | #19 |
18 | World Trade Center | #25 |
19 | Big Brother UK | #39 |
20 | Anna Kournikova | #18 |
21 | NBA | #20 |
22 | Grand Theft Auto 3 | #36 |
23 | Jennifer Lopez | #15 |
24 | Brooke Burke | #26 |
25 | NASCAR | #29 |
26 | Yu-Gi-Oh | #35 |
27 | Marijuana | #16 |
28 | Baseball | #17 |
29 | Chandra Levy | #28 |
30 | The Bible | #21 |
31 | Howard Stern | New |
32 | Golf | #30 |
33 | September 11 | #37 |
34 | Audiogalaxy | #43 |
35 | Hayden Christensen | #27 |
36 | Shakira | #42 |
37 | Playstation 2 | #41 |
38 | Anorexia | #24 |
39 | Graduation | #33 |
40 | World War II | #34 |
41 | Soccer | New |
42 | The Sims | #50 |
43 | Skateboarding | #44 |
44 | Anna Nicole Smith | New |
45 | IRS | #48 |
46 | Oprah Winfrey | New |
47 | Pokemon | New |
48 | Buffy the Vampire Slayer | #38 |
49 | Xbox | #45 |
50 | Martha Stewart | New |
Source: Terra Lycos |
Continuing on the World Cup theme, Nielsen//NetRatings reports that traffic to the official FIFA World Cup Web site soared 420 percent for the week ending June 2. The site attracted more than 527,000 unique visitors, as compared to 101,000 the week prior. Visitors to the World Cup site accounted for 22 percent of the total audience traffic to Yahoo Sports during the past week.
Overall, the sports category drew fans online this past week, as more than 9.3 million Web surfers logged on to a sports site, reaching 12 percent of the active online population. Sports fans accessed information about baseball, the Stanley Cup finals, the NBA finals, the upcoming NFL football season and the June NASCAR races, among other sports events.
“Sports Web sites are a great way for fans to get the latest player statistics and game highlights, keeping surfers in constant touch with their favorite teams,” said Jarvis Mak, senior Internet analyst, NetRatings. “With real-time game updates and live streaming video clips, sports sites will continue to draw a loyal following, especially with major sporting events such as the NBA Finals, World Cup, Wimbledon and French Open happening this summer.”