Yahoo has just released their list of the most searched phrases of 2008, and it basically reads a lot like last year’s list.

Britney Spears is still the most searched phrase on the Internet.  Wonderful.  Are there really any secrets left about this woman?  How can there be such a high demand for information about someone whom the whole world already knows inside and out?

Six of the top ten phrases are carry-overs from last year’s list.  There are a few new ones, like “Barack Obama,” “Miley Cyrus,” and “American Idol.”  Basically, our society is compeltely obsessed with celebrity… celebrity culture, celebrity scandal, celebrity gossip… it’s all we care about.  You would think there would be something news-related in the top-ten, like “gas prices” or “recession”… but you would be dead wrong.

People who search for news-related phrases are far outnumbered by the folks desperate to know the kind of baby food Angelina Jolie is feeding her youngest child.

Here’s the full list, if you’re really in the mood for a depressing piece of cultural trivia:

• Britney Spears
• WWE
• Barack Obama
• Miley Cyrus
• RuneScape
• Jessica Alba
• Naruto
• Lindsay Lohan
• Angelina Jolie
• American Idol

Don’t expect this list to change much over the coming years.  Sure, someday I fully expect us to tire of Britney Spears, and replace her at the top of the list with some other starlet like Miley Cyrus.  But honestly, I would have thought that would have taken place by now, and it hasn’t.  So what do I know?

Anyway, this is a good reminder that we don’t always know the common search user as well as we think we do.  I’m constantly telling SEO clients to think outside the box when it comes to predicting what people will search for, and here’s why.