Yahoo! En Espanol announced its most popular searches on Yahoo! Pop for the month ended January 31 (http://espanol.pop.yahoo.com/pop/01-2009/). An evolution of the company’s monthly Top Searches lists, Yahoo! Pop allows users to access the site and stay in touch with what’s hot and use it as a resource to search for and spot trends. Information on Yahoo! Pop is available and searchable by day, month and category.

The Most Popular Searches in Yahoo! Pop for January include:

Top 10 Overall Searches
1. Jessica Simpson
2. Paola Rey
3. Sofia Vergara
4. Selena Gomez
5. Ashley Tisdale
6. Scientology
7. Maria Sharapova
8. Kim Kardashian
9. Hello Kitty
10. Ninel Conde

The searches for the month of January were dominated by women in the entertainment industry. Searches for singer Jessica Simpson peaked last month after photos of her showing a curvier figure hit the web. Colombian actresses Paola Rey and Sofia Vergara also topped the Yahoo! Pop list, coming in second and third in the ranking. Disney Channel teen sensations Selena Gomez and Ashley Tisdale were also popular among users last month as their hit TV shows and movies have catapulted these young starlets into the limelight and pinnacle of fame. Other Yahoo! Pop darlings last month included the tennis pro Maria Sharapova, reality TV star Kim Kardashian and Mexican bombshell Ninel Conde. Also, controversial religion Scientology and the beloved Hello Kitty character rounded up the list for January.

In addition to the most popular overall topics, Yahoo! Pop also reveals the Top Ten Searches in six other categories: entertainment, music, technology, celebrities, news and sports. During the month of January, upcoming sequel Transformers 2 was the most-searched topic in the entertainment and news category, as the much anticipated trailer was one of the most viewed videos on YouTube. Reik, Salsa and Daddy Yankee nabbed the top three spots in the music category. Olympic champion Michael Phelps was among the most-searched-for celebrities, taking fourth place in the celebrity category, second in sports and second in news, as a photo of him smoking marijuana hit the web late last month, shocking fans around the world. Searches for Banco Mercantil, JustinTV and Craigslist were among the most popular in the technology category.

Updated daily, Yahoo! Pop search results showcase the diverse interests and concerns of U.S. Hispanics around the net, from gorgeous celebrity sightings and salacious political news to funny jokes and the latest consumer obsessions. To come up with the Yahoo! Pop Top 10 list, Yahoo! created a unique algorithm which scans anonymous query logs from Yahoo! Search across a variety of categories to see what themes and trends bubble up to the surface. Individual searches are never used to develop these lists.

Every day millions of people visit Yahoo! to search for news, hobbies, curiosities and all types of information. By putting of all of the searches together, the site displays the topics that are of most interest to people. To view the most popular searches of the day, click on ‘Pop’ on the Yahoo! En Espanol front page or visit: http://espanol.pop.yahoo.com/.