Yahoo! Japan recently revealed their general search word ranking for the first half of 2011, but Google decided to release a more specified ranking that only focuses on search terms that include the members of AKB48.

AKB48 is constantly topping the celebrity search rankings in Japan due to various big events and stories, such as their "3rd General Election" earlier this year. Therefore it would be more interesting to go more into the detail and find out the name of which member was googled the most during the first half of 2011, rather than looking at the general rankings.

The mentioned general election also had a big influence on this ranking, since many of the members who climbed up in the internal ranking of the idol group suddenly gained a lot of interest from fans and other people who might have learned one or two new names next to the typical suspects. Of course, solo activities in dramas, movies or music are just as important to attract more interest in your person.

On the other hand, those who have already been known well enough, even by the general public, would probably never rank near the top of such rankings, resulting in a list with an interesting mix of names.

Check out the complete ranking below!

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Google's AKB48 Members Search Ranking

01 - Kashiwagi Yuki
02 - Sashihara Rino
03 - Kojima Haruna
04 - Miyazawa Sae
05 - Minegishi Minami
06 - Takahashi Minami
07 - Watanabe Mayu
08 - Itano Tomomi
09 - Oshima Yuko
10 - Kasai Tomomi

Source: Oricon