Want to know how much a certain word of phrase been searched for on the Internet the past 4 years? Check out Google Trends a web trend analysis tool from Google; it will give you a chart-based analysis on that phrase.
If you tried to search trends for “Lebanon” you will get the following chart:
Which from looking at it you will see that there is a base level of search about lebanon eveyday, and a two main spikes, one earlier in 2005 around with Rafiq Hariri was assassinated, and in the summer of 2006 around the Israel invasion of Lebanon.
Try another search, lets say “Global Warming”:
A seen above, in 2007 a lot of people got more aware and searched for information about Global Warming. Which in my own observation was about right.
“Facebook” got more than a trend more of a hike in 2007 and still on apparently, we will see until when will it keep that hike:
Try it your self for whatever phrase, be it a country, a web app, a person, or a topic!