The year is nearly over and about this time every year we look back on the fastest growing search terms on Google (Ireland). Here are the top 10:

1.    Chatroulette.
2.    Gmail
3.    Hotmail.
4.    Glee
5.    Facebook.
6.    TV3 Player.
7.    World Cup 2010
8.    Gerry Ryan.
9.    RTE Player.
10.  Ryanair.ie

The only big surprise in the top ten this year is "Chatroulette". At position 1 Chatroulette has attracted the largest surge in traffic from Irish web users this year. What is Chatroulette? I hear you ask..Chatroulette is a site that allows you to have video chats with random strangers. The idea is good but the concept is wide open to Internet perv's who have hijacked the video element and turned it into a shady voyeuristic pleasure dome. But if you are into that kind of thing, you will probably love it!

Gmail and Hotmail are battling it out for number 2 and 3 position. At Hotmail’s present state I can’t see them overtaking Gmail in popularity. Hotmail looks bad, is slow to load and does not have enough space.

As usual we have a social media giant in the top 10, Facebook. Facebook, at number 5, continues to grow despite the rumours of its demise due to privacy issues.

Television stations have a superb idea when they decided to play re-runs of television series on their websites. TV3 and RTE both have “Players” where you can watch missed episodes of your favourite programs. The popularity of the Players is reflected as the TV3 Player is number 6 while the RTE Player is number 9.

“Gerry Ryan” was a keyword that reached number 8 in the list due to the unfortunate death of the broadcaster.

Scrapping into number 10 position is Ryanair.ie. They continue to draw in punters to their website due to their prices and maybe helped by the recession.