the buzz log
Murder at the Cricket World Cup?
On Sunday, Bob Woolmer, the 58-year-old coach for the Pakistan cricket team, died in a hospital in Jamaica. He was in the Caribbean, with his team, for the fiercely anticipated games of the Cricket World Cup. So far, police have stopped short of saying "murder," but some local sources have asserted that the cricketer and trainer was strangled.
His shocking demise, which followed the team's devastating loss to Ireland, has roiled the South Asian country, thrown a pall over the tournament, and battered the Search box. Searches for "bob woolmer" immediately surged and "woolmer" doubled. Demand for "pakistan cricket" and "pakistan cricket news" also leapt.
The top "woolmer" queries rising in Yahoo! News reveal not only the strong interest in the case, but many searchers' suspicions over its cause...
Crazy For Cricket
Unlike baseball's "world series," the Cricket World Cup involves more than one nation. And judging from the amount of cricket buzz dominating our top sports movers, it seems the entire population of each of those countries has hit the Web for more information on this year's games.
For wicket fans unable to make it to the West Indies, where the 2007 tournament is unfolding, the Web offers one of the best ways to catch the action in real time. Buzz on "live cricket" leapt more than 500% yesterday, and searches for "world cup cricket live," "cricket live score," "cricket online," and the popular site "cricinfo" have also soared..
As the 51 matches play out over the next month and a half, the international championship will surely continue to score in Buzz. Here's a sampling of the other cricket-related queries currently hammering Search...
Jiminy Cricket!
Forget baseball and its "world" series. Searches on the proud international sport of cricket have triumphed in Buzz. Just yesterday, searchers propelled "cricket news" (+455%), "cricket" (+315%), and "cricinfo" (+251%) across the Search box and into our top 50 movers.
Bat-happy searchers didn't stop there. Wednesday's one-day tournament between India and the West Indies inspired a wave of searches, smacking "india vs. west indies," "dlf cup," "cricinfo india," "west indies," and "zee sports" off the Buzz chart. As for other top "cricket" queries scoring runs this week, take a swipe at these...
Cricket, Wickets, Bowls, and Buzz
For those without ties to the Commonwealth, cricket is a decidedly confusing sport. The Buzz happens to belong to the befuddled sector of the population (looks a lot like baseball to us!). One thing we do understand is Search, however, and we can tell you quite confidently that cricket is immensely popular with searchers and has the Buzz scores to prove it.
The current run of cricket matches, which began in July with England and Australia's biennial Ashes matchup, has Search bowling over with people looking for scores and live updates. Over the past month, we've seen steady increases in searches on "live cricket" (+529%), "cricket scores" (+417%), and "cricket india" (+446%), to name a few. "Cricket" is ranked in our top 300 searches overall, and "live cricket" falls within the top 5,000.
Cricket fans appear to be overwhelmingly male -- men accounted for 87% of "live cricket" searches. Though the U.S. does not have nearly the number of fans as the U.K. or India, it does have its share of cricket followers. A high number of searches come from the San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D.C., metropolitan areas.
And so the world awaits the results of its favorite cricket matches. In the meantime, we'll be studying up on the laws of cricket to see if we can't do more than sit on the Search sidelines.
top movers
| Rank | Subject | 1-Day Move |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ford 400 | Breakout! |
| 2 | Indonesia Ferry | Breakout! |
| 3 | Jordan Chandler | 3481% |
| 4 | Evan Chandler | 2322% |
| 5 | American Music Awards | 1841% |
| 6 | John F. Kennedy | 1529% |
| 7 | Turkey Stuffing Recipes | 1361% |
| 8 | Liam Hemsworth | 1172% |
| 9 | Lou Dobbs | 1142% |
| 10 | Hendrick Motorsports | 888% |
top leaders
| Rank | Subject | Move | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Black Friday | +340 | 1290 |
| 2 | NFL | +489 | 670 |
| 3 | Jennifer Lopez | +451 | 515 |
| 4 | New Moon | -67 | 250 |
| 5 | American Music Awards | +236 | 249 |
| 6 | UFC | -36 | 239 |
| 7 | Miley Cyrus | +66 | 169 |
| 8 | Hulu | -11 | 154 |
what's the buzz?
A subject's buzz score is the percentage of Yahoo! users searching for that subject on a given day, multiplied by a constant to make the number easier to read. Weekly leaders are the subjects with the greatest average buzz score for a given week.
For more detailed information, visit our FAQ.