Computerworld - The annual list of top search queries on Bing show that Facebook, Apple's iPhone 5 and the presidential election have been of significant interest to the online world during 2012.
"Believe it or not, it's already time to look back at 2012 and reflect on the moments that most fascinated Americans this year," wrote the Bing Team in a blog post yesterday.
"From one of the most hotly contested elections in U.S. history, the pageantry of the Olympic Games in London and high-profile IPOs to rising stars, reality TV and Gangnam Style, it's been a pretty exciting twelve months," the team added.
Microsoft's Bing team aggregated billions of search queries and came up with the top search terms in a variety of categories - from Social Networks to News Stories, Consumer Electronics, Olympians and Musicians.
The most searched social network -- Facebook -- is no surprise. It's the largest social network in the world. Twitter was the second most popular social networking term followed by MySpace, LinkedIn and Tumblr.
The top search in the Consumer Electronics category -- Apple's iPhone 5 -- was also much talked about this year. Apple's iPad was the second most searched term in the category, followed by Samsung Galaxy S III, Galaxy S3 and Amazon Kindle reader.
The iPhone 5 also topped the list of Google News search terms. Other top news searches this year include the 2012 elections, the 2012 Olympics, Hurricane Sandy and the Honey Boo Boo reality show.
The winners in other categories included:
Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at 
@sgaudin, or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed 
. Her e-mail address is sgaudin@computerworld.com.
Read more about Internet Search in Computerworld's Internet Search Topic Center.
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