MySpace overtook eBay as the most frequently used search term in 2006, according to research firm Hitwise, MediaPost reports. Moreover, MySpace-related terms accounted for half of the top 10 search terms.
The popularity of MySpace among search queries speaks to the value of the brand, Hitwise's Bill Tancer said: "Search term data is the closest proxy for what is on the minds of Internet users, and is a great measure of brand equity. MySpace saw tremendous growth in traffic in 2006, which is a reflection of the increased brand equity for MySpace."
Other popular search terms included "eBay," which finished third, "Yahoo" fourth and "MapQuest" fifth; the generic term "lyrics" was in 10th place.
The results reported by Hitwise were a non-aggregated view of the most popular U.S. queries that sent traffic to specific websites across all major search engines.
