Right after my earlier post today on top search terms of 2009, I saw that Google had just released their Zeitgeist 2009.  While it's difficult to do an apples-to-apples comparison with Yahoo and Bing, the Fastest Rising List gives a taste:

1. michael jackson
2. facebook
3. tuenti
4. twitter
5. sanalika
6. new moon
7. lady gaga
8. windows 7
9. dantri.com.vn
10. torpedo gratis

And, yes, MJ tops this list, too! 🙂

However, what piqued my interest the most in Google's Zeitgeist this year are the Turkish entries, namely:

Sanalika, #5 in Fastest Rising

and

Sahadan, #4 in Fastest Rising in Sports.

Mind you, these are Global lists…

Sahadan is a Turkish sports news website, and to me, it's the less surprising of the two.  It's a solid property, a long-time resident of the Turkish Alexa 100, and given the level of interest in football in Turkey, a top Turkish site is not a far-fetched entry in the Google list.  Also notable is the fact that it's ranked above Livescore.

Sanalika, however,is a different story.  Ranking 375th in Alexa's Turkey rankings, it's a virtual world similar to IMVU or Popmundo. It has not made much of an impact in the Turkish internet scene so far, so I had to doublecheck when I saw its name on the Google list.

I still suspect Sanalika's inclusion on the list may be a quirk of the methodology used.  Curious…

Also, note KralOyun, a Turkish game portal, #6 in the Fastest Falling list.

All in all, Turks are showing their strong online presence as we've noted before.

UPDATE: The Sanalika saga continues with comments from Arda on TC Europe and Robin on TC.