Those 2008 LiveSearch Search Trends

Search trends can be enlightening, funny, or downright scary. While fanning through my RSS reader this morning I came across a blog post at Live Search that gives some insight into search trends for 2007 and 2008. It seems that Americans really love turkey (and have serious love-hate relationships with their spouses). This paragraph from the blog post had me laughing:

Last year people in the U.S. were learning to cook turkeys and to brine them. To argue with their spouses (maybe about whether to cook or brine the turkey) and to improve their marriages (probably after getting too worked up about the turkey). They wanted to learn how to make money and how to save it, how to lose weight both in general and in specific places, and how to lose their tan lines.

The 2008 Live Search search trends were no less funny than the previous year’s search trends. Without detailing the entire list, here are a few of the searches that Live Search users spent time on last year:

• How to lose back fat
• How to tie a tie
• How to avoid tan lines
• How to improve your marriage
• How to cook a turkey
• How to pronounce palahniuk
• How to brine a turkey
• How to argue with your spouse
• How to reduce stress in your life
• How to be happy at work
• How to make gravy

I don’t know what the fascination is with arguing with your spouse, but it seems that Americans are really interested in doing it. Maybe the folks conducting those searches are married to turkeys. That would explain the fascination with cooking and brining.
I’d hazard a guess that reducing the stress in your life is probably related to arguing with your spouse and whether or not you cook or brine your turkey. And learning how to make gravy makes sense for this year’s list considering the pre-occupation with America’s favorite bird.
The search trend I found most interesting is “how to avoid tan lines”. Last year, it seems, Americans wanted to lose them. Now they want to avoid them. First things first, as they say.
When it comes to spouses, turkeys, and tan lines, it all boils down to the pursuit of happiness, which is why so many Americans are concerned with being happy at work. And if you can tie it all together with a good windsor, I suppose that would just put a little perspective into one’s life. The rest, as they say, is all gravy.
What does all of this say about us? I don’t know, maybe search engine optimization is playing a stronger role so that more savvy readers will be able to pull some nugget of value out of this list to capitalize on. At least, I sure hope so.