Google Users Have Tv, Movies, And Music On The Brain, According to the Weekly Zeitgeist

Google Announces 15 Top Gainers for the Week Ending May 22nd

WebKnowHow
Thursday, June 1, 2006; 06:08 AM

This week's top gainers ran the usual gamut from the serious (pentagon video, barbaro) to the scandalous (northwestern soccer) to the strange (bay to breakers, jimmy hoffa).

But what our users really seemed preoccupied with this week were high-profile TV finales (mischa barton, will and grace, elliott yamin); interesting new music acts (angels and airwaves, lordi); the first blockbuster movies of the season (over the hedge, x-men); and the stars and subjects of those movies (audrey tatou, opus dei).

For breaking news and obscure information alike, people around the world search on Google. Below is a summary of the Google Zeitgeist results for the top 15 gainers on Google.com when comparing search queries that have risen by a significant percentage for the week of May 16-23.

For more information, visit the Google Zeitgeist at http://www.google.com/zeitgeist.

Google.com Gainers

1. barbaro - tragedy struck the highly touted colt in Saturday's Preakness, as he came up lame in the first 16th of a mile with multiple fractures in his right hind ankle; doctors originally put Barbaro's chances of survival at 50-50, but two days after the surgery he seems to be steadily improving.
2. audrey tatou - five years after she first made a splash in the States with Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "Amelie," the sprightly French actress is once again spurring interest with her performance in the film adaptation of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code."
3. over the hedge - the runner-up to "The Da Vinci Code" in this weekend's box-office draw, this animated DreamWorks feature boasts voice work from Bruce Willis, Garry Shandling, and Steve Carell but has received tepid reviews to date.
4. opus dei - it's not every day that a Roman Catholic prelature cracks the top 15 in the weekly Google.com gainers, but then again, it's not every day that a book and its movie adaptation ("The Da Vinci Code," for those of you who have just returned from the moon) implicate a Roman Catholic prelature in a conspiracy involving the Holy Grail.
5. mischa barton - the twiggy starlet made news this week when her character on the soapy primetime hit "The OC" was killed off in a car accident in the May 21 season finale; Barton, who reportedly ruined the surprise in a TV interview in the week leading up to the episode, is expected to leave the show to focus on a film career.
6. heather mills - after Heather and husband Paul McCartney announced their split on May 17, the animal-rights activist and former model rocketed to the top of the Weekly Zeitgeist.
7. x-men - the hype machine for the highly anticipated final installment in the X-Men film series, "X-Men: The Last Stand," is now in full swing; the movie releases worldwide on May 26, but early reviews out of Cannes (where the film was previewed) haven't been especially positive.
8. pentagon video - the U.S. Defense Department on May 16 released a 6.5-minute-long surveillance video of American Airlines flight 77 crashing into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
9. angels and airwaves - the debut album of former Blink 182 singer/guitarist Tom DeLonge's new act, Angels and Airwaves, hits stores May 23.
10. jimmy hoffa - the search for the former Teamsters president continues more than 20 years after he disappeared in suburban Detroit; after receiving a tip, the FBI is expected to excavate a horse farm in tiny Milford Township, MI, on May 24 to look for Hoffa's remains.
11. will and grace - the popular NBC sitcom ended its eight-year run on May 18; reviews of the finale were mixed, with some dinging the episode for being contrived and schmaltzy, and others praising it as humorous and satisfying.
12. lordi - the Finnish heavy metal group, whose members never appear in public without their ornate "monster" costumes, won Sunday's Eurovision Song Contest; some have criticized the group's appearance and material, but the Finns have embraced them, naming a public square after the band to commemorate the win.
13. bay to breakers - the 95th running of the San Francisco race drew more than 60,000 participants this year, many of them in various stages of undress or costumery; Kenyan Gilbert Okari won the race for the second year in a row, finishing the 7.5-mile course in just over 34 minutes.
14. northwestern soccer - allegations that the Northwestern women's soccer team was hazing its freshman players surfaced on May 08; the team has been suspended pending an internal investigation.
15. elliott yamin - the third-place finisher in this season of "American Idol," Yamin was ousted on May 17 when he received slightly less than one-third of the 50 million votes.