Chinese Googlers a completely different breed

Just as the rest of the world is getting swept away in a social networking frenzy, googling for keywords such as "Badoo", "Facebook", "Ebuddy", "Hi5" and even "Second Life", Chinese googlers it seems are a completely different species. In 2007, four out of the top ten keywords among Chinese googlers were wealth-related, searching for keywords such as "stock", "China Merchants Bank", "Industrial and Commercial Bank of China" and "China Construction Bank". Bank of China is conspicuously absent from the list!

In the technology arena, they have preferred to search for instant messaging services such as "QQ" (in pole position) and "MSN" (#10). Other favourites were "games", "Kaspersky" (an anti-virus programme) and "Thunder" (a download software) and Google Earth. Their international counterpart preferred to search for video-sharing services like "Youtube" and "Dailymotion" instead. Top keyword worldwide was the "Iphone".

Other interesting finds:

• The most googled Chinese dish was sweet-and-sour ribs, followed by fish-flavored shredded pork, home-style braised pork and braised eggplant.
• The most googled English word was "wire mesh", followed by "crystal", "china", "mushroom" and "ballast". (Lots of druggies are googling too, it seems!)
• Taiwan R&B star Jay Chou was No 1 among entertainment stars, followed by Chen Chusheng, the champion of the reality series, Happy Boys.