Would Paris Hilton in the WWE be the biggest draw ever for search engines?

It would. But if she were playing poker at the same time, while attacking a Pokemon and marrying The Bachelor, well, the results would be unreal. But what do you care?

If you're a blogger, or a small business, or a huge business, or an entrepreneur, it should matter a great deal. Because knowing what people are searching for on a daily basis can mean more money. Especially in the blogging/adsense business, when traffic to your site can generate some very nice income for you and your family.

Of course, you don't want to be hooking people with a popular topic and then writing about something else. Remember the old "FREE SEX" headline, with the copy saying "now that we've got your attention, let's talk life insurance." But if you keep your finger on the pulse, and write about some of the most popular topics on the web (or aim products at the people searching for those topics) then you will literally be the goose that laid the golden egg.

So, where do you find out about searching habits?
There are several resources out there. Some are quite specific, some more vague. I've listed my TOP 5. If you know of better ones or new ones, please let us all know in the comments box.

1 - DOGPILE SEARCHSPY
This one is funky. It's not the best for giving you an overall picture of the week's searches, but I like it because it's in real-time. You can literally see what people are typing in as you watch the web page. You can choose from Filtered (family friendly) or Unfiltered (watch out, there's porno about) and the results are instantly displayed on your screen in a scrolling format. Here's what I got just now. (Oh, and Metaspy has a very similar service here .)

2 - THE LYCOS 50
A veteran in the searching business, this Lycos tool shows you a regularly updated picture of who is searching for what, along with other categories like Movers & Shakers. This was the inspiration behind the Frankenstein's monster above. Lycos seems to be dominated by Paris, Poker and WWE every week. Check out the top 10 the week ending May 19th.

3 - AOL HOT SEARCHES
Personally, I have no time for AOL. But millions of people do and it's important to know what they're searching for, too. As with anything by AOL, it's dumbed-down but the search data was interesting. Ann Coulter at #1 this week? One question...why? Yikes. (No surprises American Idol was up there).

4 - ASK IQ
ASK.COM have subdivided this main page into four main sections. News Searches, Advancing Searches, Movie Searches and Top Searches. I took a quick snap of the news searches. Would you believe it, Paris Hilton is up there again! Only in America can someone be famous for being famous. Know what I mean.

5 - YAHOO BUZZ
Hey, Yahoo is still useful even in the times of the Google monopoly. I particularly like Yahoo Buzz. Always have, always will. It's well designed and easy to navigate. And hey, guess what? Hilton didn't make the top 10. Does that mean Yahoo users are smarter than Lycos users? Hmmmmm.

Honorable mentions.
Here are a few others I use, just not as often. Google Trends and Google Zeitgeist are very good. I don't know why I don't use Zeitgeist more often, even the name is great. Google's Adwords tool is also a handy resource. And UrgentClick has some good keyword data, too.

So, go forth an use this information to get more visitors to your sites and more consumers of your products. All it can do is help you out.

Main horrendous picture by me. I thank you.