2010 Top 10 Searches at Yahoo!

Since 2001, Yahoo! has been tallying up the top searches of the year, providing a snapshot of a culture in motion.

Top 10 Searches of this year - 2010 are :

1. BP Oil Spill

On April 20, 11 workers went missing after an explosion at the Deepwater Horizon, a BP-leased oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Their tragedy, though, was soon overshadowed by the ensuing BP oil spill, which threatened U.S. southern shores.

As BP struggled to control nature, technology, and the ire of humankind, forces converged to assist the multinational company in containing the mess. Still, the horror seemed to unfold in slow motion, as the spill approached the ecological disastrousness of the 1989 Exxon Valdez crash and became the most searched term on Yahoo! in 2010 -- a first for a news story since we started compiling Top 10 searches a decade ago.

2. World Cup

South Africa was hosting, and the African continent -- so often tied to colonization, poverty, and apartheid in headlines -- could show how far it had come, as well as what still needed to be done. The country built five stadiums for the event and fixed up another five for the 32 guest nations who converged on June 11.

3. Miley Cyrus

 Miley has been working hard for the distinction, as she celebrated her last year as a minor. Or, more accurately, she was mapping a shortcut to adulthood in 2010: She scored the cover of Harper's Bazaar, played the romantic lead in a Nicholas Sparks movie, and taped the end of her Disney show, "Hannah Montana."

4. Kim Kardashian

 Kim cemented herself in 2010 as America's reality royal, along with her family, in "Keeping Up With the Kardashians." Through good looks, breeding, and a can-do spirit that has launched perfumes, boutique stores, and a MasterCard, Kim has worked all her assets to get to the top. Devoted legions follow her on her blog, Twitter, and Facebook.

5. Lady Gaga

 With hit singles, sold-out concerts, and a meeting with the Queen last year, Lady Gaga might have been excused if she had had a meltdown or just burned out this year. But while her chart success didn't top 2009's, Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta cemented herself as the first lady of pop culture.

6. iPhone

 Apple already had something "magical and revolutionary" up its sleeve with the iPad, so its fourth swipe at the iPhone seemed almost, well, excessive in these lean consumer times.By now, the company knows that any shiny object from its dream factory will get followers queuing up.

7. Megan Fox

 In her quick rise to fame, Megan Fox has been notably savvy in the celebrity arts. At the end of 2009, the New York Times dubbed her a "devoted student of stardom, past and present" who "talked her way into the limelight."

8. Justin Bieber

 By the start of 2010, Bieber's first album, "My World," had gone platinum. In keeping with today's hyperspeed stardom, his second album followed within five months, and he embarked on a sold-out, six-month concert tour.

9. American Idol

Season 9 of "American Idol" embraced a grand social experiment. For the first time ever, the Fox singing factory allowed its contestants to break the online cone of silence, granting them their own Facebook pages and Twitter feeds.Three months in, the experiment collapsed: The contestants' pages were shut down, and the singers got herded into the official "Idol" Facebook page. In the meantime, ratings dropped steadily from the show's 29.7 million season debut.

10. Britney Spears

 For 10 years, Britney Spears ruled the Internet. In the annual Yahoo! top searches list, she played second fiddle to PlayStation 2 in 2001 and 2002, and fell to fourth place for the next two years. But then Spears rallied in 2005 and stayed put at the No. 1 slot through good times -- and one mighty bad year for the pop princess.The 2009 death of the King of Pop, and in some measure her own return to superstar normalcy, knocked her off the Yahoo! Search perch to fifth place. In 2010, leading a scandal-free life has dropped her all the way to No. 10 ... but it may prove to be a sweet spot for

Read more at  Year In Review . Reviewed by Vera H-C Chan of Yahoo.