Today is all about search engines. Google Zeitgeist lists recent search trends: this week's top 10 gaining queries include "paula poundstone", "delta airlines", and "vicky botwright". Perhaps you're like me and are wondering, who the heck is Vicky Botwright? So of course I go look her up in Google...wait! That'll make the stats higher! Oh dear, it's a never-ending cycle. (She's an English squash player, turns out. Who knew English squash was so darn popular?)

Google also lists the top 5 misspelled queries: "amtrack", "volkswagon", "jenifer lopez", "william sonoma", and "shakespear". I'm thinking companies like Amtrak should get these stats and change their names accordingly. Jennifer Lopez loves to change her name anyway, right?

You can do your own research via Google as well. Go to the Google AdWords page, click on the 'continue' button at the bottom, and then enter your keyword(s). Click on Update Keyword Estimates, and voila. Google provides rough estimates of how often those keywords are searched for on a daily basis. For example, my favorite dinosaur, triceratops, gets a score of 300/day. Velociraptor, while admired by some, gets a measly 100.

Lycos has their version: the top 50 searches of the week. Number one is Dragonball, which, as far as I can tell is an on-line game. Tattoos is next. Wimbledon is number 9 here; it's #1 on Google. I wonder how the demographics differ for the different search engines. (Links mostly from metafilter)