YouTube Is Standing Tall

But short, high-quality clips that viewers have a hard time finding on television tend to be much more popular. For example, Charlie the Unicorn -- the adventures of a jaded unicorn, which is produced by FilmCow.com -- ranked 17th. A video by satirical musician Weird Al Yankovic ranked 18th.

The finding is important because many observers have feared that while YouTube received massive publicity for the offbeat amateur video clips that populated its site, it was really the popular copyrighted TV shows that drew users to the site in the first place.

"What is it about youtube.com that has made it so successful so quickly? Is it the amazing quality of user generated content? Is it a broadband fueled obsession with watching short videos?" investor Mark Cuban asked in a post on his well-known blog, titled "The Coming Dramatic Decline of Youtube," in September 2006. "No & No," he answered, arguing instead that the company's success was based on hosting copyrighted material and giving away hosting space instead.

But the most recent data show that neither amateur videos nor copyrighted material may play as big a role in driving search traffic to YouTube's site as the popular viral videos that make frequent rounds on the Internet. As for amateur videos, even the search term for "lonelygirl15 " -- random clips of a girl narrating mundane events about her life and arguably the biggest draw among rosters of YouTube "amateur" stars, ranked 136 in terms of search queries.