At the end of each year, Google releases its "Year-End Google Zeitgeist," a ranking of the previous year's top search queries based on gaining or declining popularity. 2002's top gaining query was Spiderman, while the top falling query was Nostradamus. Google also includes lists of the most queried men, women, athletes, movies, and several other categories. View all the lists here.

Here's a Boston Globe article comparing the 2002 google lists with 2001.