Tube strikes, Rooney scores and London has the X Factor

Google - searching for a hero inside itself
Google - searching for a hero inside itself

Our look into Google's top searches has taken us to some seedy places this week.

The exclusive list which Google hands to us on a gold platter every seven days – well, through email – shows just what Londoners have been searching for online.

It seems that the top results have to do with Wayne Rooney and the problems he is having with his tackle [insert knob-related gag here].

Because of this, his name is the second top search term for London. Jennifer Thompson, the person he allegedly slept with behind Colleen Rooney's back is on top – a position she is probably more than familiar with.

Rooney is uncomfortably sandwiched between Thompson and Maria Marchese in the top searches.

Surprisingly Marchese is not the other woman in Rooney's alleged ménage a trois but a stalker who was jailed for nine years in 2007 for, well, stalking.

She was the muse for U Be Dead, an ITV drama starring David Morrissey – something which landed at lucky number 7 on the top trend list.

Factor of X

Other search terms include X Factor and Cher Lloyd, a 16-year-old singer who went on X Factor, sung a bit and looked a bit like Cheryl Cole.

This means she will definitely get to the judge's house, only to be told at the last moment she is a little too young for stardom. She'll then cry and you will all lap it up like the sadists you are.

As London was subject to a 24 hour tube strike, the words 'tube, strike and London' were also Googled a lot. We cannot confirm if the phrase 'Bob Crow's head on a stick' was also a popular one, however.

Finally, a number of newspapers made the top trends list. The Sunday Mirror came in at number 8 – as it broke the Rooney-gate story – and the News Of The World is in the list twice.

Actually the actual phrase typed was 'newsoftheworld', which meant the tabloid was Googled in a hurry by people who really, really wanted to know what was going on in last week's cricketing scandal.

For those interested in the full top 20, the list is below:

jennifer thompson
wayne rooney
maria marchese
coleen rooney
cher lloyd
tube strike london
u be dead
sunday mirror
notw
bristol half marathon
newsoftheworld
moto gp
daybreak
transformers
this is england
motogp
new zealand earthquake
daily mirror
xfactor
itv.com

Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.