Here’s what Metro Atlantans google

Bigfoot? Yeah, we’re all over that. Also gas prices, foreclosures, drought and — it goes without saying — “The Real Housewives of Atlanta.”

Those are some of the search terms that Atlantans Googled in 2008 more than most of the rest of the country.

That’s according to the 2008 Zeitgeist report, a summary of what we searched for on the Internet. The mega search engine, Google, releases the report today.

The overall Top 10 Google search terms are mundane: song lyrics, MySpace, Yahoo and YouTube were the most popular. (That’s after Google filters porn and spam out of its Zeitgeist findings.)

But Google’s “rising” list identifies the terms that made the biggest jump in popularity in 2008. In Georgia, the top five rising searches were Obama, AT&T, Facebook, wiki and Craigslist.

The report also allows us to see where Atlanta ranks among U.S. cities for certain search terms. You would expect us to be No. 1 for, say, Saxby Chambliss and Michael Vick. But we were also No. 1 in 2008 for Bigfoot.

The city’s national ranks in other Google searches were:

• Gas prices and gas station: 1

• Bankruptcy: 2

• Barbecue: 3

• Drought: 3

• “American Idol”: 3

• Obama and McCain: 3

• Foreclosure: 5

A couple of surprises in the Zeitgeist (a German word that translates as “spirit of the times”) showed up in sports. “Georgia mascot” was the No. 2 search among all mascots, after “Olympic mascot.” And on the list of sports rivalries, Georgia-Auburn ranked sixth.

The full Zeitgeist report can be found online at Google.