Google Zeitgeist – Just about every major content publisher is currently offering its take on this year’s top this, top that. When such lists are not produced by democratic means (i.e. user votes and surveys), naturally I tend to take these with a grain of salt. But Google Zeitgeist is an exception. If you’re following the Official Google Blog on a regular basis like I do, you get weekly updates on the latest search trends people are creating when typing in search words and navigating through the Web.

Based on their accumulative data generated by searches online, the agenda-less search giant has summed up 2009’s most influential “people, events and memories that made this year unique.” Their Zeitgeist is a neatly organized list of categories such as celebrities, news, sports and more. Clicking on each of these will prompt a detailed report and sub lists related to that topic with nonsense content and friendly graphs to help you see things in a visual way. That’s how I discovered that the South Beach Diet made a huge comeback this year, leaving the Atkins and low carb diets in the dust.