What kinds of searches are people doing? Are they turning to search engines for need-to-know information, or for trivia, or both? Most searchers, 55%, say they are as likely to look for information they consider important as for trivial information.\u00a0 Some 28% of searchers are more serious; they say they look mostly for information that is important to them. And 17% are more whimsical in their searching, using search engines mostly for information they don\u2019t consider important.<\/p>\n\n
\nAbout one in four internet users have searched for his own name on a search engine, just to see what comes up. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
More specifically, some 44% of users say that most or all the information they search for online is critical. It is information they absolutely need to find, for instance to accomplish an important task or answer an urgent question.\u00a0 About one quarter of those searchers say everything they search for is that critical. On the other hand, about one quarter of all searchers, 24%, say that very little of the information they search for is that important to them.<\/p>\n\n
A number of users describe their recent searches for important information[3.numoffset=”3″ Comments from users come from an online survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in May \u2013 June, 2003.]:<\/p>\n\n
\n
- \u201cI was asked about state labor laws — timecards and the legal ramifications of paying only some of the time listed.\u201d<\/li>\n
- \u201cMedical information for my son…it gave us some background information and a common ground to start asking questions about his condition.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n
Conversely, 33% of searchers say they would not bother looking up most or even all of the information they search for if they lacked access to internet search engines.\u00a0 On the other extreme, about one quarter of searchers, 24%, say that very little of their searching is in pursuit of such trivia.<\/p>\n\n
Another user describes a recent search he considers expendable:<\/p>\n\n
\n
- \u201cI just completed a course on the Operas of Giacommo Puccini.\u00a0 With the internet I was able to easily obtain his biography and a complete listing of all his works, various reviews of the pieces and as much detail as I wanted.\u00a0 All of this without leaving my desk and to obtain this when it was convenient to me\u2026. (without a search engine) I probably would have not bothered to obtain that information.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n
Popular search terms show what is on Americans\u2019 collective mind.<\/h3>\n\n
The big search engines slice and dice their search logs and compile various lists of the most popular search terms. These lists give some sense of what is on America\u2019s collective mind, reflecting our shared culture, news, trends, events, and phenomena.\u00a0 Popular search terms always include a lot of seasonal references, current news, and pop culture. \u00a0The search engines regularly omit terms relating to adult content from their lists.<\/p>\n\n
According to AskJeeves[4.numoffset=”4″ http:\/\/www.ask.com\/<\/a>], the top searches for the week of Oct. 8, 2004 were online dictionary, music lyrics, games, halloween costumes, jokes, baby names, quotes, Britney spears, Paris Hilton, poems.<\/i><\/p>\n\n
Or from Yahoo[5. http:\/\/buzz.yahoo.com\/weekly\/<\/a>]: Eminem, Britney Spears, Usher, Mt. St. Helens, Nelly, Register to Vote, Halloween costumes, Jo Jo, Paris Hilton, Green Day, NASCAR, Christina Aguilera, Hilary Duff, NFL, Linkin Park, Slipknot, Drudge Report, Alicia Keys, John Kerry, My Boo<\/i><\/p>\n\n
Or from the Lycos 50[6. http:\/\/50.lycos.com\/<\/a>], from Oct. 2, 2004: Airline Flight Tracking, Clay Aiken, Paris, Hilton, Pamela Anderson, Halloween costumes, Britney Spears, Michelle Vieth, Halloween, NFL, poker, KaZaA, Brooke Burke, beheadings in Iraq, Christmas, http:\/\/50.lycos.com\/greatesthits.asp<\/a>, Lindsay Lohan, Star Wars 3, The Olsen Twins, WWE. Dragonball, Baseball<\/i> <\/p>\n\n
\nAll Time Hits: Searches for Britney Spears and Pamela Anderson have been on the Lycos top 50 list for 277 weeks in a row.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
And other search terms are the flashes in the pan, following events or news. In the week following the first of the presidential debates, John Kerry landed at Lycos\u2019s #36 spot, and George Bush made #40.\u00a0 They had not been on the list the previous week. <\/p>\n\n
Top searches of the year include some timeless classics and pop culture with real staying power. These have been in the top 100 from week to week during all of 2002: the Bible, Diablo II, Neopets, Tupac Shakur, The Beatles, Sailor Moon, The Simpsons, Carmen Electra, Oprah Winfrey, World War I, New York City, Final Fantasy, World War II<\/i>.<\/p>\n\n
Sometimes, search terms reflect extraordinary times when the whole world seems focused on a single thing. Lycos 50 published an unedited and an edited version of top hits to their web site between noon and midnight on Sept. 11, 2001: The unedited version: CNN, News, World Trade Center, CNN News, CNN.com, MSNBC, ABC News, BBC, Breaking News, World News.<\/i><\/p>\n\n
\n\u201cIraq\u201d was Google\u2019s #7 search of the year for 2003, after Britney Spears, Harry Potter, Matrix, Shakira, David Beckham, 50 cent.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
And the edited version, which does not include news organizations: World Trade Center, Whitney Houston, Pentagon, World Trade Centre, Bin Laden
World Trade Center New York, Osama Bin Laden, American Airlines, Camp David, Nostradamus.<\/i><\/p>\n\nAnd Google\u2019s Zeitgeist archive gives a sense of the organic nature of search, showing what terms are gaining or losing popularity from week to week, or the popularity of search terms as they correlate with current news events. For example, when the space shuttle Columbia was lost over Texas in February of 2003, searches for \u201cNASA\u201d spiked for about a week.<\/p>\n\n
Beyond the popular search terms are the unique queries.<\/h3>\n\n
Unique queries lie outside our collective culture, in our personal interests and problems, our individual work, our eccentric curiosities, and perhaps our miscellaneous misspellings and oddities.<\/p>\n\n
We get a glimpse of these unique terms, as they appear in the raw feed of search terms that users key in.\u00a0 These snapshots of the linguistic soup that a search engine processes are a reality check of the true hodgepodge that arrives at engines, without the benefit of neat packaging into organized lists. A sample from the MetaCrawler series[7.numoffset=”7″ http:\/\/www.metaspy.com\/info.metac.spy\/metaspy\/unfiltered.htm<\/a>] looks like this:<\/p>\n\n
klantgericht werken een voorbeeld<\/a>
“turano bakery”<\/a>
zip codes<\/a>
chicago miracle mile<\/a>
www.boxden.com<\/a>
web based msn messenger<\/a>
free t3 and rhode island<\/a>
fibroid tumor<\/a>
fewmets<\/a> <\/p>\n\nchief university of illinois<\/a>
food<\/a>
vw black majic pearl<\/a>
pneu egger<\/a>
footwear of the longago<\/a>
hospital beds + hydraulic<\/a>
pianobar<\/a>
fibroid tumor<\/a>
ferrari<\/a>
antietam<\/a> <\/p>\n\nque es gerente de proyectos<\/a>
“straight-backed chair” +stuhl<\/a>
hot4mo<\/a>
food<\/a>
ora-29909<\/a>
free porn pics<\/a>
corn boiler heat<\/a>
united nations cafeteria<\/a> <\/p>\n\ngovernment jobs<\/a>
ganesh image<\/a> <\/p>\n\nsexy lingerie dancewear<\/a>
cambrils<\/a>
lipitor<\/a>
a united<\/a>
golf balls<\/a>
robert youngson<\/a>
fsa obrien fax<\/a>
food<\/a>
check 21<\/a>
chrissy hynde<\/a> <\/p>\n\nA broader user base and increased web content have altered the landscape of what we search for.<\/h3>\n\n
In the earliest days of the internet and search engines, when the population of users was dominated by young men, two of the most popular search topics were sex and technology. Now, with the huge demographic expansion of the internet user population, their more diverse interests, and the vast growth of online content, the search landscape has changed. A recent study examining search trends finds the proportion of searches for especially sex and pornography has declined dramatically since 1997, while searches for the tamer topics of commerce and information have grown.[8.numoffset=”8″ Spink, Amanda and Bernard J. Jansen. Web Search: Public Searching of the Web<\/em>. Springer Publishers, 2004.]<\/p>\n\n
The study took search terms from logs of three popular search engines, AltaVista, AlltheWeb.com, and Excite, spanning 1997 \u2013 2002, and organized them into categories. The following represents the categories from AltaVista in 2002: <\/p>\n\n
\n
- People, places or things<\/li>\n
- Commerce, travel, employment, or economy<\/li>\n
- Computers or internet or technology items<\/li>\n
- Health or sciences <\/li>\n
- Education or humanities<\/li>\n
- Entertainment or recreation <\/li>\n
- Sex or pornography<\/li>\n
- Society, culture, ethnicity or religion<\/li>\n
- Government (or military)<\/li>\n
- Performing or fine arts<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n
Categories generated from the search terms from all three engines look very similar. The search logs, from the search engines Alta Vista in 2002, Excite in 2001, and AlltheWeb is 2002, pointed to considerable common ground among searchers.[9. Categorizing search terms, like categorizing anything from languages to plantlife, is an exercise that is partly art and partly science. The resulting taxonomy of search terms, although subjective, can give us some kind of map of the world of searching. Other directories or taxonomies of search terms could dissect search terms differently, and give us different perspectives on what we search for.] The first three categories included the greatest number of queries. The most popular category, \u201cPeople, places and things,\u201d captured 49% of search queries for Alta Vista, 41.5% for AllTheWeb, and 20% for Excite.\u00a0 Topic two, \u201cCommerce, travel, employment and economics\u201d, captured 12.5% of search queries for Alta Vista, 12.7% for AllTheWeb, and 24.7% for Excite. Sex and porn captured 3% of search queries for Alta Vista, 8.5% of Excite and 4.5% of AllTheWeb. Computers and technology got 12% for AltaVista, 16% for AlltheWeb, and 9.6% for Excite. All remaining topics captured single digits of the search market.<\/p>\n\n
One category of particular interest is commerce. There is no exact way to measure the number of commercial searches, but at least one statistic gives us an idea of the scope of commercial searching: comScore Networks reports that 40% \u2013 45% of search queries now include sponsored results.[10. comScore qSearch: Q2 2004.] While it may not be the case that all these search queries were launched with commerce in mind, the search terms used were close enough to warrant a commercial opportunity in the returns. Further, Google\u2019s vice president of engineering, Urs Holzle, in commenting on the large number of user complaints about increasing appearance of commercial search results, says that is the direction the Web is moving. \u201cEven three years ago,\u201d he said, \u201cthe Web had much more of a grass roots feeling to it.\u201d[11. http:\/\/insight.zdnet.co.uk\/hardware\/servers\/0,39020445,39175560,00.htm<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n
When Americans don\u2019t use search engines and what they don\u2019t search for.<\/h3>\n\n
People do not always turn to search engines to find answers or information they are seeking online. Sometimes they take different paths: going straight to favorite, familiar specialized portals; using URLs someone has recommended, or following links they come across. <\/p>\n\n
For example, when asking those who look for health information online about the last search did for health information, most searchers, 81%, reported that they started at a search engine. But the remaining 19% said they went right to favorite health sites, or took recommendations from friends or family, or followed links on other familiar websites.<\/p>\n\n
Another example comes from the 29% of internet users who have looked for religious or spiritual information online. When users were asked about their most recent search for religious purposes, 51% said they began at a search engines, the rest at a familiar religious Web site or religious portal.[12.numoffset=”12″ https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/internet\/PPF\/r\/45\/press_release.asp<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n
In a similar measure, some 66% of internet users have gone online to use a government website. When asked in a 2003 survey how they got to their most recent government website visit, some 37% got there thru search engines, 19% heard about the website from friends, relatives , or\u00a0 advertisements,\u00a0 17% went there on a repeat visit, 14% found them through\u00a0 government publications, and 8% through general government websites, like firstgov.gov.[13. https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/internet\/Reports\/2001\/CyberFaith-How-Americans-Pursue-Religion-Online.aspx<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n