Most Searched Terms Can Help You Find Breaking Hot News Stories: The Yahoo Buzz Index

Wonder where the buzz is? I know that the blogosphere has lots to offer with lots of buzz references available on DayPop, Technorati, and some of the many other blog news and RSS clearinghouses, but, as I have just found out, mainstream Yahoo can guide you too.

Though the service is not new this is an excellent online reference resource for any blogger, journalist, online reporter who wants to have a pulse on what the hot news items (as reported by mainstream media) are at anyone time.

The Yahoo Buzz offers also a set of 20 RSS feeds providing the latest updates on everything from general buzz movers and shakers to TV, Movie and Sports buzz-makers.

The most valuable Yahoo Buzz newsfeeds are the Buzz Log Daily which is an up-to-date review of the hottest searches, the Overall Leaders showcasing the top daily searches and the Overall Movers which shows the top percentage movers on a daily basis.

 

 

Movers are the search terms that have increased their buzz score over the previous day's score by the greatest percentage. Leaders are the search terms with the greatest buzz score for a given day.

Like today, every Sunday, Yahoo publishes the Buzz Index Weekly Report, which recaps the top 20 searches for the week and offers colorful commentary on recent buzz activity.

The information appearing in the Yahoo Buzz is collected from the searches normal Web users perform at Yahoo!. The Yahoo! Buzz counts in fact the total number of people searching for specific subjects.

Inside the Buzz, movers are the subjects with the greatest percentage increase in buzz score from one day to the next. Buzz leaders are instead the most searched subjects on Yahoo! for that day.

A subject's buzz score is the percentage of users searching for that subject on a given day, multiplied by a constant to make the number easier to read. More precisely, each point is equal to 0.001% of users searching on Yahoo! on a given day. For example, a buzz score of 500 for "Tsunami" translates to 0.5% of all users searching on Yahoo! For buzz movers, the number displayed is the percentage increase in the subject's buzz score from the previous day.
Company names (such as Yahoo!), utilities and formats (email, MP3), and general terms (movies, downloads, football) are filtered out by the editors of the Yahoo! Buzz Index. The editors' goal is to list subjects that are interesting to the broadest possible audience. To this end, it appears that also terms related to adults-only content are also excluded.

The Yahoo! Buzz Index is published Tuesday through Saturday. All the rankings on the Yahoo! Buzz Index are updated each weekday and reflect the traffic from the two most recent days. For example, Wednesday's Buzz Index reflects Monday's searches and clicks. (According to Yahoo twenty-four hours are required to process all of the Yahoo Search data and to verify the results.) This takes away some of the hottest part of the Buzz, as it is when a buzz breaks that it is most interesting for reporters to catch it.
Buzz items of particular interest are labeled Breakout! and indicate search terms that go from very few searches to a very large number of them in a few days/hours.

The Yahoo Buzz is very US-centered and much of the celebrities that populate most of it are American movie, TV and music stars. Nonetheless there is always the possibility of spotting early interesting trends and topics that are much in demand by American audiences.

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Of high interest to buzz seekers are also
the Most Viewed News and the Most Emailed News Items.