The year-end Google Zeitgeist is making the rounds, and is always an entertaining document. I thought I'd test the presumption that popular searches are reflected in the index by voluminous listings. That is to say, there is a rough correlation between how many queries are entered for a search term and how many items match the query. This is a standard search marketing formula; keywords are like hinges that connect search popularity with voluminous online content. Supply meets demand. The formula seems to work when applied to five Zeitgeist comparisons, as listed below. I compared Zeitgeist popularity results (the first term of each pair is the einner, reflecting more search queries) with Google Smackdown results (number of hits for each keyword in Google's index. the Zeitgeist winner matched the Smackdown winner in each case.

the force vs. dark side
yoda vs. skywalker
katrina vs. rita
britney vs. mariah
surfing vs. snowboarding