They were the three most searched items on the net this year

The year has not yet ended but Microsoft says "Twitter" was among the top searches of 2009 on its new search engine Bing and a company which monitors language has crowned it the top word of the year.

Microsoft, in a blog post on Sunday, said "Michael Jackson," "Twitter and "Swine Flu" were the top three search topics of the year on Bing.

Others making the list of top 10 Bing searches were "Stock Market," "Farrah Fawcett," the actress who died in June, "Patrick Swayze," the actor who died in September, and "Jaycee Dugard," the California girl kidnapped at the age of 11 who turned up alive 18 years later.

Microsoft said it had analyzed billions of search queries to come up with the list.

Global Language Monitor (GLM), a Texas-based company which analyses and tracks language trends, said meanwhile that "Twitter" was the "Top Word of 2009."

Twitter above all

"In a year dominated by world-shaking political events, a pandemic, the after effects of a financial tsunami and the death of a revered pop icon, the word Twitter stands above all the other words," said GLM president Paul Payack.

Other top words on the GLM list included "Obama," "Stimulus," "Vampire" and "Deficit".