Who won American Idol tonight vs. who won the Civil War?

I guess we really do live in a pop culture world. I just finished researching keyword phrases that start with the words “who won” and was a little surprised at the phrases that folks are searching for these days. I wasn’t completely surprised about the relative search volumes of some of the below phrases but was somewhat befuddled about some of the actual phrases. I wouldn’t  have thought that very many people would have to search for the answer to who won the Civil War. But then again, maybe I am being a bit short-sighted and should realize that some of these searches are being done from countries all over the world. Or maybe there are a few hundred knuckleheads in places like Earle, New Jersey or Muscle Shoals, Alabama who really don’t know who won.

Anyway, below are some of the more interesting search strings that begin with the words “who won” and their approximate number of searches a day.

1. Who won the most Oscars during his career? 1,100 daily searches
2. Who won the next Food Network Star? 980 daily searches
3. Who won American Idol tonight? 810 daily searches
4. Who won the Revolutionary War? 690 daily searches
5. Who won Dancing with the Stars? 640 daily searches
6. Who won the Civil War? 440 daily searches
7. Who won Flavor of Love? 46 daily searches

Here’s an amazing discovery. Out of the top 50 search strings that begin with the words “who won,” 41 of them that were asking about who won on a reality show. The nine that weren’t about some reality show were asking who won a war (or Civil War battle), a super bowl or an election. I’m really not sure what this says about our society. Would I be naive to think that most people know who won our major wars and don’t need to look for that answer? And people pay less attention to reality TV and thus have to search for who won (because they didn’t care enough to watch)? Or is it simply that more people are interested in who got voted off the Biggest Loser than are interested in knowing about our country’s history. I’m sure it’s a combination of both these, but either way, I’m not sure what to think about the results in this little piece of research. What do you think?

Note: I did this research on February 22, 2009, which happened to be the night of the 81st Annual Academy Awards (Oscars) so the results are a bit skewed with that taking the top spot. On any other day of the year this probably gets searched for much less.