Paris Hilton may be plaguing gossip rags and keeping magazine editors in business, but for online surfers real ‘news’, eBay and the Yellow Pages are proving more popular according to a recent survey of Australians’ search engine habits.
Despite Ms Hilton’s ubiquitous media presence, she only ranked as the 30th most searched for item on sensis.com.au.
The word “news” topped the top 100 list of searched for items, followed by eBay, Yellow Pages, White Pages and “weather”.
The Sensis survey involved analysing millions of searches performed on sensis.com.au over a six-month period between February and October 2005 to determine Australian’s most popular searches.
“Today’s survey reveals ‘news’ searches are exploding in popularity, leaping from 22nd position in our February survey to number one in the past six months,” Sensis’ manager of corporate affairs Prue Christie said.
“Obviously Australians have a growing thirst for up-to-the-minute news, prompted by recent world events such as terrorist attacks, earthquakes and hurricanes.”
Christie also noted that Australian office workers were using the Internet to count down the clock to knock-off time with 2pm-3pm the busiest single weekday hour for searches on sensis.com.au.
Other findings from the survey found:
- Australians are gearing up for the summer holidays with searches for festive terms such as accommodation, travel, boat, caravans, party hire and costume hire proving popular.
- AFL is more popular than NRL and ‘chat rooms’ now outscore cricket and soccer.
- Melbourne continues its dominance as Australia’s most popular city, beating Sydney by three positions.
- Telstra knocks Qantas off the podium as the most searched for business.
- Australians are increasingly looking to access government agencies online, with the ATO (Australian Tax Office), RTA (Road Transport Authority), Medicare and Centrelink all featuring in the top 100.
