Celebrity bad-girl Paris Hilton and social networking website Bebo were the hottest topics on Google in 2006, the superstar online search engine revealed.

The "Year-End Google Zeitgeist" top ten lists for general and news searches on the Internet showed global interest in online socializing and video viewing, as well as World Cup soccer, cancer, autism, celebrities and Hurricane Katrina.

Young website Bebo, where users share videos, pictures and music and seek former schoolmates, ranked ahead of MySpace, another teen-oriented social networking site, in the Google list of most popular general searches.

World Cup soccer ranked third, with the remaining top-ten queries focused on video sharing, radio blogging, and wikis, which are websites open to editing by visitors.

The Spanish word "rebelde" placed eighth in the general search rankings, with query results including a popular band, a video-sharing website, and a television series.

Hilton, who starred in the reality television show "The Simple Life," topped the list of the most frequent Google news searches, with actor Orlando Bloom ranking second.

Hunts for cancer news ranked third, followed by podcasting, Hurricane Katrina, and bankruptcy in that order.

Swiss tennis star Martina Hingis was seventh on the news search list, ahead of autism, the US National Football League draft, and the television show Celebrity Big Brother.

MySpace topped the general searches and singer Janet Jackson the news searches at Google in 2005.

(China Daily 12/21/2006 page6)