We have taken stock of our inventory and using our web statistics software we can announce that the following articles were the most popular at Pandia in 2006:

Google buys online word processor (March 10)
Google’s acquisition of Writely was a major step towards Google becoming the online computing tool for everyone. Google Docs and Spreadsheets, as it is known as now, may ultimately become the Google Office of the web. Microsoft is not amused.

In the same spirit Google also launched it’s own online web page creator leading to another popular article: Google adds web site creator (Feb 28). See also: Top 5 Google services (Oct 5).

The multimedia search engine Quaero, Europe’s answer to Google (Jan 3)
Lars Våge’s article on French president Jacques Chirac’s attempt to save European culture from the barbarian hordes (i.e. American Google). In December we reported that the Germans have had enough and are abandoning ship.

Ask Jeeves becomes Ask.com (March 1 2006)
Microsofts attempt to rebrand MSN Search as Windows Live Search has been a fiasco. Ask Jeeves, however, retired their butler and changed name to Ask without loosing a visitor.

Top 5 alternative search engines (Sept 17)
Everyone’s doing top 5/10/25 lists these days. It’s called link bait by the professional. We decided to make something useful out of the concept, and presented several surveys of online tools and sites. In this article we presented the best alternatives to Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

5 Firefox extensions that will change the way you search (Oct 12)
Another popular Top 5 article, this time covering plug ins for the Firefox web browser. A majority of Pandia’s readers are now using Firefox and other Mozilla browsers.

Ten steps to boost your AdSense commission (April 1)
Guest writer Kalena Jordan told our readers how to make the most out of Google’s Adsense program, whereby web sites owners may earn some extra bucks presenting Google ads on their sites.

The AllofMP3 music search store - MP3 crime or creativity? (May 17)
The Russian authorities have now promised that they will close down the very popular MP3 download site AllofMP3. It has not happened yet, though. Pandia looked at AllofMP3 and online music sales in general.

Google buys the French National Library (April 1)
Our April 1st joke was a hit in Europe. Our American readers did not refer to it, though. Strange…

Ms. Dewey presents a new sexy search engine (Oct 21)
Microsoft surprised us in October, presenting a very seductive and animated version of their Windows Live Search engine. It is pretty funny, although not very useful from a search perspective. The word sexy probably brought us a few extra visitors.

Google and Yahoo! give webmasters a helping hand (Aug 27)
Google and Yahoo! have become much better at providing support and information to webmasters in 2007. In this article Pandia presented the new webmaster support portals, with help files, blogs, discussion forums and tools.

What we want from Google this Christmas (Dec 12)
Our Christmas wish list was read by Google’s Matt Cutts, who liked it very much. We would like to believe it contributed to the subsequent changes on the Google home page. Blog Search is now one of the alternatives in the “more…” pull down menu.

Top 5 social bookmarking services (Nov 28)
In 2007 we have definitely seen the need to include Web 2.0 social community tools in our analysis of the online search scene. This article on the best online social bookmarking services is now listed in the Wikipedia.

See also: SEOmoz’s 2006 Stats in Review
Marketing Pilgrim’s Top 10 Posts of 2006