Rebecca Black Google, Oh, Rebecca Black. You gave us a reason to reconsider our favorite day of the workweek. And apparently the Internet couldn't get enough.

Black, the teen songstress who became a YouTube sensation with the bubble gum ear worm "Friday," topped the Google Zeitgeist list of hottest search terms in 2011.

Released in March, the largely reviled tune caused searches for the then-13-year-old's name to increase more than 10,000 percent over the last year, Google reported Wednesday.

The company's own Google+ social network was second on the list. If that seems all too convenient, note that Zeitgeist rankings consider how fast a search term rises. So something that didn't exist last year, like Google+ or Black's career, is inevitably going to have an advantage.

"Jackass" star Ryan Dunn, who died in a car crash in June, was the third-hottest search.

Searches for Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, ninth on the list, rose 982 percent over last year and peaked the week after his death in October, Google said.

Also on the list was an Apple product that doesn't even exist: the iPhone 5. Google says searches for that term peaked the week of Sept. 25, days before Apple lovers learned that the new phone they were getting was, in fact, called the iPhone 4S.

Of course, where there are top risers, there are fastest fallers.

As Google+ emerged (albeit to what appears to be waning interest), former social networking hot spot MySpace slid, becoming the fastest-dropping search term.

This year was the 11th for Zeitgeist, Google's annual look at search trends. The report, rendered with interactive images and detailed graphics, breaks down searches by country and region as well as tallying global activity.

In Chicago, Metra was the year's most-searched term, followed by CTA Bus Tracker and Chicago Tribune.


— CNN

Source: chicagotribune