Ron Paul defeats Hillary Clinton!

BURLINGAME, California - December 13, 2007 - How will the economy fare next year? Will we have a recession? Inflation?

Economists are debating the question fiercely, but netizens have already voted: Roughly three times as many people are searching the Internet for the word "inflation" than "recession."

Thanks, Google.

The Mountain View, Calif., company on Thursday released a slew of similar results in its annual zeitgeist list of the most-searched topics in 2007. The topics included presidential candidates, lawsuits, Hollywood starlets, sports teams and song lyrics. Republican U.S. Rep. Ron Paul took the No. 1 spot in most-searched presidential candidates, beating out Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience, told Forbes.com that Ron Paul's popularity was surprising, but his online campaign "shows what an effective tool the Internet is. He's not nearly as covered [in the media] as Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, but he has marketed himself online. He's using the Internet to his advantage."

The fictional TV pop star Hannah Montana, played by Miley Cyrus, beat out the Rolling Stones in popularity by a generous margin. But classic values aren't dead: Barbie's search ranking soared far above Hannah Montana's.

Topics that fell out of favor in 2007 but were heavily searched in 2006 included the soccer World Cup, Sudoku, singer Shakira and MP3, according to Google.

To compile its lists, the company used Google Trends, its site for online popularity contests. Type in two or three terms and up pops a chart that shows the relative number of Google searches each word received during a given time period.

Google is willing to separate out how frequently the media uses a term in contrast to user searches. For instance, the media has referenced the iPhone more frequently than the iPod since about June. But other than a brief spike in July, the public has steadily searched more for "iPod" than for "iPhone." The one place where "iPhone" and "iPod" searches almost match the media references? New York City, media capital of America.

What Google won't share is exactly how frequently those searches took place - just the relative volume. So we can't tell you the exact number of times Ron Paul was searched, for instance. Mayer said Google doesn't release the data for competitive reasons and for issues related to online advertising.