• by Masha Geller , March 27, 2003

Last week, war or no war, basketball still topped the 50 most popular user searches list. According to the Terra Lycos Top 50 searches list for last week, "despite huge levels of war interest, and reduced levels of basketball interest, March Madness still came out on top with Web users by a margin of 1%."

Aaron Schatz, writer of The Lycos 50, says the NCAA basketball tournament generates the most search activity online each year, thanks to the popularity of brackets and office pools. This year, the NCAA Tournament received about 30% fewer searches than last year, because by mid-week, the nation turned its attention to war."

Al-Jazeera became the number one term Web users were searching for on Sunday, March 23 and Monday, March 24, generating three times as much search activity as anything else, due to the POW video, which North American television media outlets chose not to air. Search activity also jumped for Iraqi Television and POW video.

Saddam Hussein also made his debut on the list at number four. President George W. Bush (#25) returned to The Lycos 50, with many Web users searching for text of the two speeches President Bush gave Monday and Wednesday nights.

Schatz wrote that anti-war queries, such as anti-war slogans and searches for protests, generated 15% more searches than pro-war queries, which include pro-war slogans, reasons for war, and searches asking for ways to support our troops. Patriotism also appears to be back on the rise with American flag searches nearly making this week's list.

And - hold on to your hats, ladies and gentlemen - controversial "Bowling for Columbine" director Michael Moore, fresh off his anti-war acceptance speech at Sunday's Oscars telecast, has received twice as many searches as Britney Spears and three times as many as Jennifer Lopez over the past 24 hours.

The full list is available on the Lycos website and it looks like this week basketball is back on top.