Lycos Inc, provider of social publishing, media and search services, has announced that poker appeared top of its eighth annual list of the top 50 search terms for the year.

The results are based on The Lycos 50, a weekly list of the most popular people, places and things Lycos users search for every day from January 1 to December 1. For the second year in a row, poker drew the top spot, generating more search activity with Lycos users this year than any other search term.

Propelled by the continued success of the World Poker Tour and numerous televised celebrity poker tournaments, online interest in poker dominates Lycos’s search logs week after week, with even the headline-grabbing tabloid antics of Britney Spears unable to topple it from the number one spot.

Second in the list of most searched terms was MySpace, followed by the American pop singer with fourth spot going to fellow American Paris Hilton. Golf came fifth followed by YouTube and the anime and manga series Naruto. Eighth spot went to Disney while Pokeman finished ninth. Rounding out the top ten was World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE).

Two newcomers to the Lycos 50 included Disney’s High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens and American Idol contestant Antonella Barba. While each gained a good deal of attention in 2007, it was the individual nude photo scandals that drove search interest in the young starlets over the top.