Julian Price

Celebrities and Google Search:Getting the Celebrity Picture, Glossary to the Stars



Posted: Tuesday, May 24, 2011

by Julian Price
http://www.uk-freelance-content-writer.co.uk/

Celebrity pictures, is perhaps surprisingly, not the most searched for celebrity theme on Google! In fact “pregnant celebrities” is the most rapidly rising search term when it comes to our interest in famous people.

However, our fascination with famous people and their lives goes way beyond searching for celeb pics and finding out who may or may not be pregnant in the world of Hollywood. In fact, one wonders how much of the internet’s traffic comes from our near obsession with the rich and famous!

I am actually fascinated with the fascination itself, so decided to do a bit of research about this celebrity culture phenomenon and try to unearth some of the trends in the world of celeb themed Google searches.

So, what follows is an attempt to monitor the popularity of certain search terms (and how and why people might conduct these searches) during the past 7 or 8 years and then look at some of the past 12 months favourites along with some of the fastest rising celebrity searches.

Much of the information is taken from various Google tools search as the Adwords keyword tool and in particular Google Insights. The results alter frequently, so to check out the most up to date stats, it’s well worth checking out these free tools.

Dictionary.com: Celebrity = A famous or well known person, fame or renown.

Okay, so what have been the most popular searches for famous people over the last few years?

  1. Celebrity – Not sure how much anyone would actually find out from this word alone, but it is by a clear margin the most searched for term within this realm.
  2. Celebrities Pictures – Many would think that this would be comfortably the top term but it’s strong in second.
  3. Famous Celebrities – I am pretty sure that celebrity by definition attests to fame itself. Not sure searching for non famous celebs would be much fun.
  4. Male Celebrities – Now this is interesting!  Does this mean that more women search this subject than men? Where will the ladies show up in this list?
  5. Hot Celebrities – I am reasonable confident that the “hot” here means physical appearance rather than a star that is sweating profusely...but you never know!
  6. Celebrities Pics – Okay, now with 2 “picture” related terms in the top 8, perhaps that makes up for it not being at the top of the pile.
  7. Celebrities Photos – Make that 3! People really are very visual in their searches.
  8. Female Celebrities – Who would have thought that out of all these terms, this one would be the last of the 8?
So, the 8 search terms above are themost searched for celeb themes over the past 8 years! How have these terms changed, if at all? Let’s take a look at the top searches of the past 12 months and compare.

  1. No Change
  2. Hot Celebrities – This one is up from number 5 creating a real heat wave.
  3. No change here either.
  4. No change.
  5. Top Celebrities – This one is a new entry and appears pretty vague to me...top at what?
  6. Celebrities Photos – Will it surprise you that this is the only picture related term this time around?
  7. Female Celebrities – Up one position, but still nowhere near as high as you might think.
  8. Indian Celebrities – I am sure the huge success of the Bollywood scene will have contributed to this search term’s popularity.
Some interesting changes there as well as some telling non movers!

Now then, let’s take a look at the highest rising celeb search terms for the past 12 months. They may not have made into the top few yet but are certainly on their way.

  1. Pregnant Celebrities 2011 – Apparently we all want to know who is having a famous baby!
  2. Yebisu Celebrities – According to the minimal information I could find about this, it’s an adult themed manga animation series. No Wikipedia page to confirm this.
  3. Dead Celebrities – I wondered when this would show up! It does seem as though our celebrity fascination has taken a slightly morbid twist in the last few years, seeing a rise in dead celebrity hoaxes.
  4. Celebrity Rehab – It appears that the limelight really gets to some more than others.
  5. Pregnant celebs again, only 2010 this time.
  6. Celebrity Cruises – To my best knowledge, this is not an opportunity to sail off into the sunset with Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt, but simply a company with that name!
  7. Celebrities that Smoke – Smoking has really hit the headlines in the last couple of years. We had the public smoking ban and the recent rise of electronic cigarettes, including that Johnny Depp moment in “The Tourist”.
  8. Celebrities with Herpes – (I am not making this up!) If they are not dead or in rehab it seems we want to know if our celebs are ill!
All these and plenty more besides, as we are merely scratching the surface of the World’s interest in all thing celebrity gossip. What does it tell us, perhaps that our searching has developed a darker tone recently? You tell me!
Julian has diplomas in freelance journalism (with distinction), copywriting and proofreading. He is also a creative writer and poet who writes both professionally and for pleasure. Julian has written articles for an internet marketing company and although this medium is often restricted by topic, his writing still maintains a unique and often humourous style, with many of his articles achieving good results on search engines. He has found the discipline involved with this kind of work to be a great writing exercise and believes it enhances and improves other areas of his writing. Julian is becoming an established freelance writer and many of his articles here at searchwarp are a showcase of the variety and quality of his work.

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