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This year also marked the coming out party for Miley Cyrus, who discarded her Disney persona of “Hannah Montana” and launched her own album under her real name to make the top five in Yahoo’s top search terms

Miley Ray Cyrus (born Destiny Hope Cyrus on November 23, 1992) is an American actress and singer-songwriter. Cyrus is better known for starring as Miley Stewart/Hannah Montana in the television series Hannah Montana on the Disney Channel.

Cyrus became a sensation after Hannah Montana debuted in March 2006. Following the success of the show, in October 2006, a soundtrack CD was released in which she sang eight songs from the show. In December 2007, she was ranked #17 in the list of “Forbes Top Twenty Superstar Earners under the age of 25″ with an annual earning of US$3.5 million. As of December 2007, she is working on a movie spin-off of Hannah Montana, titled Hannah Montana: The Movie which set to release on April 10, 2009.

Cyrus’s solo music career began with the release of her debut album, Meet Miley Cyrus on June 23, 2007. Her second album, Breakout was released on July 22, 2008. Breakout is Cyrus’s first album that does not involve the Hannah Montana franchise. Both albums debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200.

In 2008, Cyrus was listed among artists and entertainers as one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in The World.

As 2008 came to a close, the nation’s economic turmoil battled with the presidential election for the hearts and wallets of searchers. In February, the Treasury Department announced it would be disbursing stimulus checks to boost economic activity and taxpayers clamored to know if the check was actually in the mail. The fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis hit Wall Street hard in October as the Dow Jones Industrials fell to its lowest point, producing the biggest point drop in the Dow’s 112-year history. Gas prices marked the only silver lining, falling sharply late in the year after reaching all-time highs during the summer.

Here is the top 10 of Yahoo’s Search Topics concerning the Economy

1. IRS Stimulus Checks

2. Oil Prices

3. Gold Prices

4. Gas Prices

5. Dow Jones

6. Sallie Mae

7. Stock Market

8. AIG

9. Foreclosures

10. Debt Consolidation

Barack Obama was the second most searched for person in 2008 on Yahoo!. Headlines of his election victory received the most clicks than any other story on yahoo.com this year, and he was the third most searched term overall. Obama soared up the search ranks tremendously as the election campaign moved forward with consumers using Yahoo! Search to get informed, learn more about him and decide how to vote in this critically important election.

Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician and the President-elect of the United States. The first African American to be elected President of the United States, Obama was elected to be the junior United States Senator from Illinois in 2004 and served until his resignation on November 16, 2008, following his election to the Presidency. His term of office as the forty-fourth U.S. president will begin on January 20, 2009.

He is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Obama worked as a community organizer and practiced as a civil rights attorney in Chicago before serving three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. He also taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, Obama was elected to the Senate in November 2004. Obama delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004.

As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress, Obama helped create legislation to control conventional weapons and to promote greater public accountability in the use of federal funds. He also made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. During the 110th Congress, he helped create legislation regarding lobbying and electoral fraud, climate change, nuclear terrorism, and care for U.S. military personnel returning from combat assignments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Britney Spears has been the most popular search term and person for seven out of eight years on Yahoo!. In 2008, she made a comeback with a new album, three MTV Music Awards, a sitcom guest star role and documentary on her rise, fall and career comeback.

For the benefit of those extra-terrestrial being who have no clue who Britney Spears is, a quick overview of this Princess of Pop:

Britney Jean Spears (born December 2, 1981), is an American recording artist and entertainer. Born in McComb, Mississippi and raised in Kentwood, Louisiana, Spears first appeared on national television in 1992 as a contestant on the Star Search program, and went on to star in Disney Channel’s television series The New Mickey Mouse Club from 1993–1994. After a brief membership with the pop musical group Innosense, Spears signed a recording contract with Jive Records, releasing her debut album …Baby One More Time in 1999. The album established her as a pop icon and “bona fide pop phenomenon", credited for influencing the revival of teen pop in the late 1990s.

Spears is ranked as the eighth best-selling female recording artist in the United States according to the Recording Industry Association of America with 31 million certified albums and one of the world’s best-selling music artists having sold an estimated 83 million records worldwide. Spears also holds the title to multiple Guinness World Records.

Ever wondered what the most popular search terms were in the last year? Yahoo! made a comprehensive list of the top 10. This not only presents the top ten searches, but overall themes and popular trends that came to the surface, including the economy, politicians, news stories, Olympians, rising celebrities, influential women, and notable deaths. Also included in this year’s review are additional top tens in select areas throughout Yahoo!.

Top 10 Overall Searches

1. Britney Spears

2. WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment)

3. Barack Obama

4. Miley Cyrus

5. RuneScape

6. Jessica Alba

7. Naruto

8. Lindsay Lohan

9. Angelina Jolie

10. American Idol