London, Dec 1 (ANI): Stephen Gately, the Boyzone singer who died in October, was among the fastest rising search topics on Google’s UK site in 2009.

However, swine flu was the story that dominated UK news headlines, according to Google’s annual “zeitgeist”, which analyses the firm’s search trends, reports the BBC.

It was closely followed by the rise of Britain’s Got Talent runner-up Susan Boyle and the death of Jade Goody.

In a year when several high-profile and much-loved actors, singers and celebrities passed away, Michael Jackson was the top trending topic on search engine Bing.

Also in the top 10 were searches for Twitter, swine flu, the stock market, Farrah Fawcett, Patrick Swayze, the US car scrappage scheme, known as “cash for clunkers”, as well as reality TV stars Jon and Kate Gosselin, baseball player Billy Mays and Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was found safe and well 18 years after being kidnapped as an 11-year-old.

The list of trending topics for Microsoft Bing are US-centric, because Microsoft did not launch a localised UK version of the search service until earlier this month. (ANI)