Yahoo's Year In Review Includes Top Searches For 2013 & First Ever Posting Of Top Tumblr Trends
Yahoo has assembled an impressive list of search trends for 2013, covering 38 different “Top Searched” lists on everything from top searches overall to top searched cookies (yes, the ones you eat).
Context & Ripple Effects
The December year-in-review has become a fixed ritual across the industry — Google published its fastest-growing search terms back in December 2007, and Yahoo's own lists go back years, from the year Britney was dropped from its ranking in 2007 to 2009, when Michael Jackson and Twilight topped Yahoo's searches rather than Twitter. Experian Hitwise found Facebook was the top overall query for a second straight year in 2010, so these lists now double as barometers of where attention sits.
What makes the 2013 edition different is scope and provenance: Yahoo assembled 38 separate top-searched lists, from overall queries down to cookies, and for the first time ranked Tumblr trends — the first public use of Tumblr data as a trend source since Yahoo bought the platform. The pickup was broad, with The Next Web and Mashable both syndicating the story, which suggests Yahoo got the press cycle it was engineering.
First-order effects
- Yahoo turns its Tumblr acquisition into visible editorial output for the first time, using 38 trend lists to route year-end traffic toward its own properties rather than letting Google or Hitwise own the December data moment.
Second-order effects
- Rivals publishing their own year-end rankings — Google with query velocity, Techmeme with headline terms in its 2012 trending review — now face a comparison set where Tumblr gives Yahoo a data stream none of them can match, raising the stakes on whose list gets cited by newsrooms.
Third-order effects
- If Yahoo keeps folding acquired-platform data into its flagship products, the company's M&A strategy becomes legible through these annual artifacts — though an internal memo reported in late November showed only 25% of employees willing to use the new, poorly received Yahoo Mail, a reminder that PR-grade trend lists and product health can diverge sharply.
The trend: Year-end search rankings are expanding from raw query logs into cross-platform trend reports that let acquirers showcase their portfolio companies' data as a competitive asset.