What’s popping up as we use our Google search? Business Insider ranked the top spenders by category. I’ll share the top five and we’ll see what’s been washed into our brains over the past year.

Well not shocking for us who use the search engine, finance and insurance rank tops.
$40 billion was spent in this category. Remember these names: Geico, Progressive, State Farm. like we can forget. These companies and their slogans are brainwashed into our sub-conscience forever.

The next highest spending group came from retailers. Amazon.com is on top, spending over 55 million dollars, which for some people seems strange. This is because there is evidence suggesting the site is stealing traffic from Google. Logical enough though, if I were Ford Motors, I would love the opportunity to advertise in Chevrolets showroom.

The third highest spenders were from the travel and tourism industry. You’ve seen the ads; Priceline, Expedia, Marriott. Makes sense, we all love to travel and we need to know where to go for the deals.

Fourth highest spending category? Education. University of Phoenix, ITT Tech., and DeVry. We all know these names, there’s nothing new here. We have to get an education for all those jobs that aren’t available.

Finally the fifth highest spending Google advertising campaigns came from Home and Garden. Lowe’s and Home depot. Do they really even need to advertise? Are they not on every street corner? Sears also fell in with home and garden. I guess they were fighting one last fight before they decided to start closing down a whole bunch of locations in January of this year.

There you have it. These should have been the most frequently brainwashed brands and categories for 2011 if you use the Google search engine. Hope it was refreshing!