While Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin lost in the election, she trumped President-elect Barack Obama as the most-searched term on the Internet. That’s according to the results from Google’s first annual Year-End Zeitgeist list, which collected the search terms people typed the most in their Google search boxes in 2008.

Collecting from data from more than 30 countries, Google found that the global community had similar interests – mainly socializing and politics. Social networks comprised four of the top ten global fastest-rising queries. But the governor of Alaska — who was unbeknown to most of us before being named McCain’s running mate — topped the list as the most-typed term in Google search boxes.

The top ten fastest-rising searches on a global basis for 2008 were:

1. sarah palin
2. beijing 2008
3. facebook login (popular among US college and high school students)
4. tuenti (Madrid’s social network)
5. heath ledger
6. obama
7. nasza klasa (Poland’s social network)
8. wer kennt wen (Germany’s social network)
9. euro 2008
10. jonas brothers

Click here to find the most-searched terms broken into regions and countries.

While the list above sums up the terms of the big events and emerging trends throughout 2008, you can get a daily glimpse of what is hot on Google by visiting Google Trends, which today, for example, reveals that in the U.S. people are mostly searching for "eclampsia" (seizures or convulsions while pregnant), "parthenogenesis" (asexual reproduction) and "blagojevich" (the fallen Illinois governor).

Aren’t we a curious bunch?