Google has released its annual Zeitgeist giving insights into the collective search trends of internet users in 2009. A clear trend has been the rise of social media sites with Facebook, Tuenti (a Spanish version of the former) and Twitter making up three of the top four places, topped only by Michael Jackson.

Google have been releasing their annual Zeitgeist since 2001. While Yahoo and Bing also release similar reports, the huge market share of Google makes their report all the more important.

The United Kingdom shows slightly different results with Facebook, eBay and Spotify all featuring as fast risers. When it came to people related searches the list included the good news stories of Susan Boyle and Lady Gaga. But searches for bad news stories resulted in Stephen Gately, Jade Goody, and Michael Jackson making the top 10.

One common thread across the globe was the swine flu outbreak, with schweinegrippe, gripe porcina, 豬流感, h1n1, swinskiej grypy and sikainfluenssa proving to be a bigger even than inauguration of President Obama.