Tancer said the current obsession with celebrities was also reflected through web data, with celebrity websites garnering more attention than sites devoted to religion, politics, well-being and diets combined -- and no sign that this is waning.
This celebrity mentality had also overlapped into the November presidential election in the United States with surfers looking for images of Republican vice presidential candidate Sara Palin rather than looking for her policies.
"A lot of the focus around the candidates in general is image based. People want to know how tall Barack Obama is and also to search for their families," he said. "You have to get far down in the search terms to link the search for a candidate with any issue."
But Tancer said the speed at which information spread on the Internet had meant in some cases it was consumers generating the story and the media is last to record it -- or fact-check it.
"With the explosion of this type of false information on the Internet I think we will see someone come forward and develop a new type of software that can filter for the most accurate information," he said.
"Maybe accuracy is the next thing we will all search for."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080916/wr_nm/internet_book_life_dc
