Searching For Penn

There's really no better way to find out what the world has cared about for the past 12 months than by perusing Google's Year-End Zeitgeist, an examination of 2009's most popular and fastest rising search terms.

For example, from the top ten most Googled terms in Philadelphia, we learn the following:

1. College students stay Googling. 2. Especially Penn students. 3. Penn students do not use Blackboard enough to just go ahead and bookmark it. 4. Penn's websites are the worst! Why so many? 5. Wharton's intranet is really called SPIKE. 6. Most Philadelphians don't need to search for Under the Button because it's their homepage. Probably!

Check it out for yourself to find out more. We don't want to ruin too many surprises, but we will say that "how to kiss" made it to the top of one list, and that the four fastest rising search terms in the U.S. were (in order) "american idol," "swine flu," "cash for clunkers" and "paranormal activity." Sounds about right!