Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan; these Hollywood drama queens are topping the charts in internet traffic and breaking search records for YouTube and Google. What’s up with all the commotion? Is this really want people want to read?

Apparently so. Bloggers are taking full advantage of this spike (ahem) in a curious attempt to draw traffic by offering fake Britney Spears sex videos or reprinting Britney’s infamous open-legged glamor shot. Not only does this technique work, it works quite well. Celebrity scandals = traffic boom.

Take a look at digg. They got their spike when the story broke on digg that Paris Hilton’s cell phone had been hacked. The traffic was amazing, and some even credit digg’s success to the numerous celebrity scandals that have broke on the site.

YouTube and other viral video sites are no different. Watch Google Video’s “Movers & Shakers” for a few days, and you will quickly see a trend of borderline pornography popping up among the most popular videos (which is against Google’s TOS, by the way).

The Paris Hilton sex tape practically drove people to the internet itself. Even to this day, putting up a fake video of Paris Hilton’s sex tape will drive hordes of visitors to your site.

One of my most recent experiences was with an article relating to Lindsay Lohan on a forum. Actually, it had nothing to do with Lindsay Lohan. The article was about web layout techniques, and I happened to use a picture of Lohan as an example. The article generated tons of traffic and (and probably a lot of AdSense revenue for the forum’s owner). People were not searching for web layout techniques, they were looking for Lindsay Lohan pictures.

How long these pop trends will last, who knows. But what’s clear is that people want to see these Hollywood Queens in all their glory. For now, it is a great marketing technique that’s worth looking into, if not fully pursuing.