If you compare your average Liverpudlian and Londoner's searches, you might end up thinking that Merseysiders are obsessed with shopping and capital dwellers are all about the celebrity, if Google's fastest rising search terms are to be believed.

We all search for pretty much the same stuff on Google in the UK right? So it would make sense that a list of the fastest rising search terms in both Liverpool and London would have pretty much the same terms. Wrong.

Interestingly, the only two phrases that crop up in the top 20 terms supplied to us by search giant Google are 'Facebook' (login and home, respectively) and 'Sky Sports', continuing a sporting present that is definitely present in both sets of results.

Facebook, but not .com

Liverpool's fastest rising search term in the past week has been Facebook login – which is surely harder to type in than facebook.com? In London, Dutch footballer Rafeal van der Vaart's last ditch move to Spurs put him at the top of the list.

Big Bang Theory star Jim Parsons, second, and Man Men's Christina Hendricks were either side of Facebook in the London rankings and ahead of tennis tournament US Open, whereas Liverpool's top five searches included Natwest, Yahoo and the BBC iPlayer.

Over new arrivals of note include infamous bulletin board 4chan – responsible for some of the internet's most amusing recent japes – and Colombian bank Banco de Bogota, both in the London list.

In fact, if you could draw one overarching conclusion from the search terms it would appear that Liverpool tends to search for brands and sites, whereas London looks for events and people.

Liverpool

facebook login
sky sports
natwest
yahoo
bbc iplayer
bbc sport
youtube
liverpool fc
google
hsbc
hotmail
ebay
liverpool echo
tesco
easyjet
amazon
next
argos
orange
club penguin

London

van der vaart
jim parsons
facebook home
christina hendricks
us open
fiba
4chan
ac milan
gadget show
guns n roses
minecraft
notw
onpe
corinthians
notting hill carnival
transfer rumours
banco de bogota
formula 1
michael jackson
sky sports news

Apple and Facebook are not seeing eye-to-eye over the former's entry into social networking this week, with the announcement of Apple Ping.

Ping is available now, as part of the new Apple iTunes 10, although Facebook doesn't seem to want to get officially involved.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs informed reporters this week that the two companies had discussed how to work together to promote Ping, but that Facebook's terms were "onerous."

Ping causes 'issues'

Apple used some of Facebook's open programming interfaces to let users find their Facebook friends on Ping, although this stopped working earlier this week.

While Ping could well have directed considerable amounts of traffic to Facebook, sources claim that this would have caused site stability and infrastructure problems, hence Facebook pulling the Ping plug.

Following this, Facebook said in statement: "We're working with Apple to resolve this issue. We've worked together successfully in the past, and we look forward to doing so in the future."

Apple has not yet responded to the matter.

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has already opened his own account on Ping.