This was the historic year we couldn’t wait to end.

Economic traumas. Military entanglements. Crazy weather. And yet, even as we tried to find ways to survive day to day, we were also acutely aware that we were living through momentous times.

The Yahoo! Year in Review returns. Since 2001, we’ve been crunching lists based on search data. Naturally, we’ve expanded quite a bit since those early Internet days, and because a list of 10 is barely a drop in the sea of billions of searches, we’ve expanded beyond that to walk through the moments and events behind the trends.

This year, we have eight primary themes, and not surprisingly, two are finance-focused. “Financial Hangovers” and “Market Darlings” reflect the yin-yang of a rough year. Many of you hunkered down, staycationed, built up credit—and in more heart-wrenching scenarios reflected in searches, checked in with state unemployment sites, foreclosure details, and student loan alternatives. Not all businesses were bailing (or bailed out): Market Darlings touches on the big leap in fiscal viability of social networking sites (or rather, tiny little leaps in 140 characters or less) and e-readers. Whoever said people don’t read anymore needs to get thee to a wireless device.

You didn’t give up the political diet that you were on for the past two years. Aside from a few puzzling gubernatorial detours here and there, many of you focused on a political agenda that ranged from stimulus plans to wayward governors. The one big political category is “Obama in the House.” Barack Obama was the first politician to crack the Yahoo! Top 10 by taking the No. 3 spot in 2008, but he slipped off this year when he became the 44th President. Then again, people knew exactly where he was: on Pennsylvania Avenue, churning out executive orders and setting priorities. No matter if you voted for or protested against, the commander-in-chief commanded the headlines and searches.

We also covered overnight sensations (Susan Boyle) and infamous breakouts (Nadya “Octomom” Suleman) in “Sudden Fame,” newly coined terms in health (H1N1) and science (conficker worm) in “Mad Science,” shocking passings and sad good-byes in “Farewells,” and of course the Top 10 Searches.

Several notable shifts happened in the Top 10. The breaking news that Michael Jackson died became the top search of the year. As many of you know, the Web traffic on June 25, the day the news emerged of his demise, was massive, surpassing even Inauguration Day just months earlier. Online investigations into his death also turned into tributes to the King of Pop’s legacy, as people sought his music, videos, and even costumes to honor him on Halloween night.

While some are familiar faces (WWE, Britney Spears, NASCAR, Runescape), some terms are new: Vampire hysteria vaulted “The Twilight Saga” to the No. 2 slot, savvy rising star Megan Fox got herself in the top 5, and Kim Kardashian isn’t just the new Paris Hilton, but a symbol of reality TV prowess. As for Britney Spears, the princess of pop was hard at work this year on her “Circus” tour, and cut back on the antics that had commanded searches for the last four years of her No. 1 reign.

This year on the Year In Review site,  we also created a “Rewind” video. Check it out here:

YOUR YEAR IN REVIEW:

And as part of the 2009 Year in Review, Yahoo!s have an opportunity to tweet their own top moments of 2009. Tweet your top moments of 2009 here:

http://yearinreview.yahoo.com/2009/moments

By the way, some consider 2009 more than a historical turning point, but also the marker for the decade’s end. This year was more than a handful, but you can take a look at our past top searches by checking these links:

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

Vera Chan, Senior Buzz Editor for Yahoo!

As citizens swarmed the Capitol Mall in record numbers to be within earshot of Tuesday’s historic presidential inauguration, they stormed the Internet in equal measure.

In fact, people with Obama fever broke records across Yahoo! News on Tuesday, seeking as much news and information as possible. Let’s take a look at why:

• Historic milestone – That’s the no-brainer. It seemed that whether or not Americans voted for President Obama, they appreciated the significance of inaugurating our first African-American president. Global interest in this American tradition was never higher.
• Net news rules – As the Pew Research Center reported in December, the Internet has surpassed newspapers and all other mediums except television for national and international news. And even that is destined to change, considering 6 in 10 people under age 30 prefer the Web to TV for news. As more people turned to the Web on Tuesday, we saw our highest traffic day ever on Yahoo! News, with 12.3 million unique visitors (the equivalent of the populations of New York City and Los Angeles combined) logging 329 million page views. These eye-popping figures beat our previous records around Hurricanes Katrina and Ike.
• Web video has arrived – Online video is no longer seen as a spotty, unreliable medium fraught with outages and buffering, as it might have been in 2000 and 2004. While hiccups can still happen, it seems people now confidently log on to live news coverage online knowing they won’t miss a thing. That was paramount on Tuesday because the inauguration and ensuing festivities fell during the workday for Americans. Yahoo! News upped our video server capacity as we logged record video streams, surpassing even Election Day coverage.
• Photos attract – People like news stories, but they can’t seem to get enough of photos – both news agency and user generated. On average, people viewed more than 70 images per person among our 56 inauguration-related slideshows (vs. our normal 40 photos per person). Not surprisingly, the most viewed set was of First Daughters Malia and Sasha. Over at Flickr, people tagged more than 150,000 photos and videos with terms related to the inauguration, along with those newly submitted to the Commons by partners like the Smithsonian that show historic images of past inaugurations.

As demand for online news continues to grow, our team will look for new ways to help you sort through the volume of news information and formats available. Who knows what the next record-breaking event will be?

But one thing’s for sure. It’s nice to see Internet news come of age.

Neeraj Khemlani
VP & GM, Yahoo! News