He was the top rising search term on search engine Google this year, put there presumably by Singaporeans who were curious to find out more about his sexy picture leaks and trysts with other starlets.

The Beijing Olympics could only come a close second, while social network Facebook came in third, said Google, which releases a yearly statement on search trends.

In Singapore, five of the top 10 fastest rising searched terms for local news were sports-related ones.

'Singapore Olympics' was top, followed by 'Singapore table tennis'.

The names of the Singaporean woman who was killed by terrorists in Mumbai recently and her husband came in third and sixth respectively.

'Mas Selamat', in comparison, came in ninth.

Here are the rankings:

Fastest rising searches of 2008

1.edison chen

2.olympics

3.facebook

4.iphone

5.f1

6.google map

7.htc

8.maps

9.wiki

10.beijing olympics

Fastest rising Google News local searches

1.singapore olympics

2.singapore table tennis

3.lo hwei yen

4.youth olympics 2010

5.3g iphone

6.michael puhaindrin

7.f1 night race

8.singapore recession

9.mas selamat

10.feng tianwei

Fastest rising celebrity searches

1. edison chen

2. heath ledger

3. miley cyrus

4. cecilia cheung

5. maggie q

6. rihanna

7. mariah carey

8. leah dizon

9. angelina jolie

10. aya sugimoto

Fastest rising weirdest search terms

1. tamilo (Tamil entertainment website)

2. kongregate (free online gaming site)

3. hotel 626 (online horror game. Its unusual moniker refers to the time the website is live - 6pm to 6am)

4. zamzar (free online file conversion tool)

5. np mel (Ngee Ann Polytechnic's Mobile ELearning portal)

6. mizzima (resource site for Burma-related news)

7. 2012 (not a winning 4D number but a new Hollywood movie or an ancient Mayan belief that the world will end in 2012)

8. uniqlo (brand of Japanese casual wear)

9. ijji (free online gaming site)

10. vog (portal providing recruitment and employment services to those interested in a career in the Public Service in Singapore)