Let aside the usual searches about celebrities and pop culture the Top Trends in Search list published by Yahoo has some surprises.

First let’s took a quick list at the tech list. YouTube is the champion here, followed by Wikipedia and if you had any doubts about which was the most popular social networking site in 2007, Yahoo’s list has the answer: Facebook.

With its iTunes, iPod and iPhone trio Apple has “stolen” the next three positions, while the next gen-gaming consoles ranked seventh (Nintendo Wii), eight (Xbox) and ninth (Sony PS3).

The tech list or The Year of I, You and Wii as Yahoo named it contains a good news for Activision as their game franchise, Guitar Hero, has made into top 10 on the last position.

In the news segment, Yahoo said people have searched stories about Saddam Hussein, Iran, Iraq. The US presidential race was also a hot topic and the names of Democrat candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, were ranked on the sixth and seventh place in Yahoo’s list.

As Yahoo stated in its press release, 2007 may go down as the year people stopped talking about the climate crisis and actually did something about it. The searches about environment were led by terms like Recycling, Global Warming and Freecyclem the name of a social networking approach to local recycling. Al Gore and Live Earth were amongst there other top 10 terms in environmental searches.

As for celebrities, the life story of the troubled pop diva Britney Spears seems to have been one of the main subjects as her name emerged the first in the Top 10 troubled stars list.

She was followed by Paris Hilton and Anna Nicole Smith. Vanessa Ann Hudgens, the Disney star of “High School Musical”, became even more popular following her photo scandal and her name ranked fourth in the list.

Nicole Richie, Amy Winehouse, Rosie O’Donnell, Tara Conner, Michael Vick and

Owen Wilson were the other names in the list.

Of course, the sport news had their share in searches with NASCAR at number one, continuing to be an American favorite. Searches showed that Maria Sharapova was very hot this year, and Serena Williams’ triumph in the Australian open after a series of injuries made her a favorite of Yahoo! searchers

But to be true the soccer star David Beckham ranked on the fourth place just behind Boston Red Sox.

Also Yahoo revealed the Top 10 searches on del.icio.us social search and bookmarking site, where the people were looking after Design, HDTV or Games.

The list entitled Final Farewells – Top 10 send-offs, to whom we said goodbye in 2007. Harry Potter earned the most fare-thee-well searches of 2007, as J.K. Rowling launched the final chapter of the young wizards’ adventures.

Also Yahoo published Recalling the Recall – top 10 consumer call-backs and Elementary Deductions - top 10 searches on Yahoo! Kids.

For the complete list with all the search terms and their rankings you can take look here.