Facebook tops Swiss Google searches

The Swiss have googled “Facebook” more than any other word in 2010.

The social network site was followed by searches for YouTube, Google and the words in German and French for weather (Wetter/météo).

Wikipedia came next followed by “SBB” – the German abbreviation for the Swiss Federal Railways – with Hotmail, Swiss and iPhone making up the rest of the top ten, Google said on Thursday.

Steve Lee, the singer of Swiss rock band Gotthard who died in a road accident in the United States in October, topped the list of most searched for personalities.

After Lee come a couple of Swiss beauty queens, a few singers – both Swiss and foreign pop stars like Shakira, and Swiss weatherman Jörg Kachelmann who has been on trial in Germany on charges of raping an ex-girlfriend.

Ski jumper Simon Ammann who captured two gold medals at the 2010 Winter Olympics was the athlete most sought after in Google.

Pop music festival Paléo topped the events list, followed by Zurich’s Streetparade, while mountain resort Zermatt beat Frauenfeld and Geneva among place searches.

Other words that were frequently googled by the Swiss include Party, Schwingen (Swiss traditional wrestling) and Autos (cars).

Conspicuous by their lack of popularity were searches for the Swiss sessions of the federal parliament, the euro currency crisis and God.