Sarah Palin, earlier this year, on her drive to the number one spot in the Googlegeist.

One of the big year-end lists comes to us today from the rulers of all things online, Google, who released the findings of their annual search tabulations on their Google Zeitgeist 2008 site. The whole Googlegeist site is full of fascinating findings (like that New Zealanders are really into the new hadron collider or that Swedes are slightly more likely to search for “you tube” than for “youtube”), but we’ll focus on the marquee Googlegeist list: The Top 10 World’s Fastest-Growing Google Searches of 2008.

• 1. sarah palin: Sex always sells, crazy generally does too, so a crazy person deemed sexy by many is bound to do well in the Googlegeist.

• 2. beijing 2008: No surprise here, especially with record low turnouts in Beijing, it’s pretty clear folks favored experiencing the 2008 games online (a slightly less polluted environment).

• 3. facebook login: Lazy, lazy people. “facebook” is a full 2 digits longer than “google”, yet people insist on getting to the social networking service they could have reached in six fewer key strokes and five seconds sooner the long way.

• 4. tuenti: Proof that English will soon be displaced as the dominant language of the world and Googlegeist, this Spanish-language social networking site is fast catching up to the Anglophone-favored facebook.

• 5. heath ledger: Despite searching for “Keith Ledger” more often than not upon the actor’s death, Googlegeist-tapping searchers eventually figured it out and, by the time of The Dark Knight’s massive success, powered the late star’s name into search royalty.

If you misspell Heath's name again, the Joker'll come and getcha!

• 6. obama: This one’s a no-brainer. Although if Googlegeist standing translated to actual political power we’d be talking about President-elect Palin, so maybe this is alarming…

• 7. nasza klasa: Non-English social networking strikes again, this time in the form of Poland’s facebook-equivalent. Funny, until I Googled “nasza klasa,” I just assumed it was an Eastern European supermodel’s name.

• 8. wer kennt wen: Another facebook replicant, this one from Germany. With all these competing social networking sites, maybe in our post-nation world the next wars will be fought between members of different sites. Prediction for the 2009 Googlegeist: the fastest-growing search will be “myspace war”.

• 9. euro 2008: No surprises here, as soccer is still the most popular sport in the world and the Euro competition is slowly displacing to World Cup as the sport’s foremost throwdown.

• 10. jonas brothers: Ouch, that’s too bad. Almost as bad as Sarah Palin topping the Googlegeist, its foremost musical act is this boy band that might just as well be called Hanson 2.

We are not the Jonas Brothers.

Strangely absent: “google”, duh. No, seriously, what’s their main page’s address again?