I found these numbers using Google's Adwords program, which uses historical data to estimate how many times a "keyword" is sought in a day, week and month. Joanne Jacobs notes that many people have not used Adwords yet, so here's the crib sheet: a) configure an ad and press "continue" b) insert the name of your favorite pop icon in the "Keyword Matching" field and press "Update Keyword Estimates" button c) note the result and start again.

Ogling Google, or, for short, Oogling, could make a great new bar game. With some imaginative programming, Oogling could put marketing research and polling companies out of business.

Google has just opened its API, which has people like Dave Winer and Tim O'Reilly cheering and wondering what's next.

As Google searches for new revenue streams, the biggest of them all may be right beneath everyone's nose. Processing over 150 million searches a day, the search engine is the world's best mind-reading machine. Google should charge the API-scrapers a fee and let industrial grade Oogling begin!

The Oogle's absolute data is much more engaging than the zeitgeist "hit list" numbers that make relative comparisons among popular searches. With the raw numbers, we can peel back the consumer's skull and watch the synapses fire.

Yes, Jesus (850,000) beats The Beatles. But even "cheese" gets 750,100. Harry Potter gets 920,000. Clinton gets 1,030,100. Jennifer Lopez gets 1,135,100. Eminem gets 1,235,100. And Britney Spears gets 2,540,200.

Britney is nearly twice as big as God, who gets just 1,295,100 searches. But she's smaller than football, which gets 2,605,200. (All these numbers were researched in early April.)

Beyond celebrity watching, there are brands. Who would have guessed that Adobe gets 2,570,200 searches a month compared to 3,590,300 for Oracle and 6,495,600 for Microsoft. Coke pulls only 216,800 requests.

Anti-brands do even better: Linux pulls a monstrous 16,001,400 and MP3 pulls 23,122,100.

Republican gets 165,000 searches versus 130,000 for Democrat.

Harvard gets 750,100 versus 275,000 for Yale.

Media figures like Tom Brokaw and Garrison Keillor get zero, while Esther Dyson gets 15,000 searches. Jerry Garcia pulls 20,500, Albert Einstein pulls 100,000, and Martin Luther King pulls 405,200. Osama rates 61,900. Arafat pulls 15,500.

Proving that many people still don't understand the Internet, the word "Google" itself gets searched for on Google 1,685,200 times a month and www.google.com gets 140,000 searches. That compares to 4,785,400 searches for Yahoo and 350,000 for www.yahoo.com.

If you were BMW (2,305,100) and had just spent $10 million on an adblitz, wouldn't you like to see how much your Oogle jumped relative to Mercedes (1,303,900) or Porsche (927,700) and relative to the Oogle of other premium words like champagne(195,800)?

If you're really ambitious marketeer, you'll want to know how your word measures against the world's hottest. But chances are you aren't within an order of magnitude of sex, which pulls 32,657,300 searches a month.

(You may want to vote in the poll before you consult the (badly formatted) Oogle list below to make your own comparisons.)

Henry Copeland in Budapest, Hungary

Garrison Keillor 0

Tom Brokaw 0

Connie Chung 5000

Chirac 15000

Esther Dyson 15000

Arafat 15500

Ringo Starr 25000

Paul McCartney 35000

www.altavista.com 35000

Blog 45000

David Letterman 45000

George Harrison 50000

Thursday 50000

Allah 60000

Wednesday 60000

Osama 61900

Steve Jobs 65000

Los Angeles Times 75000

Monday 85000

xbox 90000

Financial Times 95000

Albert Einstein 100000

Democrat 130000

Muhammad 130000

Wall Street Journal 135000

Tuesday 140000

www.google.com 140000

John Lennon 150100

Friday 155000

enya 160000

Republican 165000

The Beatles 170000

Buddha 175000

Bob Dylan 185000

McDonalds 185100

Walmart 190000

Coke 216800

Cnet 225000

Rolling Stones 255000

Bill Gates 265000

Yale 275000

Moscow 280000

New York Times 290000

Saturday 295000

Ikea 315000

Nsync 325000

Dylan 330000

Blair 345000

www.yahoo.com 350000

Backstreet boys 375000

CNN 385000

Martin Luther King 405200

Sunday 480000

Meat 495000

Edinburgh 580100

U2 595000

playstation 2 655000

Cheese 750100

Harvard 750100

Beatles 830000

Jesus 850000

Harry Potter 920000

BBC 980000

Amazon 990100

Chemistry 1015100

Clinton 1030100

Jennifer Lopez 1135100

Rome 1185100

Eminem 1235100

God 1295200

Soccer 1345100

Google 1685200

Poetry 1770200

Ass 1810100

Bush 1855200

Arizona 1890200

dell 1955100

Georgia 1955200

Newspaper 2000100

Yellow 2120200

NY 2175200

Tits 2220200

bmw 2305100

XML 2390200

Britney Spears 2540200

adobe 2570200

Football 2605200

Ohio 2880300

Oracle 3590300

SMS 3835300

Paris 4035300

Blue 4635400

Yahoo 4785400

sony 4975300

Red 5305500

palm 5345400

White 5700500

Microsoft 6495600

Radio 6960500

nokia 7255500

London 7410600

New York 8025700

TV 8070600

Black 9810900

History 11326200

LA 15006300

Linux 16001400

MP3 23122100

Sex 32637300