<$BlogRSDUrl$> Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. Author/Speaker/Consultant
Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. Author/Speaker/Consultant
Internet Happenings, Events and Sources


Saturday, November 13, 2004  

Sex Down, E-Shoppping Up In the Web Search World
http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/news/breaking_news/10020462.htm

The focus of users' Web searches is shifting away from sex and pornography toward e-commerce and business, according to "Web Search: Public Searching of the Web," written by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and Penn State. "Twenty percent of all searching was sex-related back in 1997, now it's about 5%," says University of Pittsburgh professor Amanda Spink. "It's a little bit more in Europe, 8-10%, but in comparison to everything else, it's a very small percent. People are using (the Web) more as an everyday tool rather than as just an entertainment medium." Spink says over the same time period, queries for e-business or commerce have risen 86%. What hasn't changed much over the past seven years, however, is how hard people are willing to work on their Web research. The answer: Not very. Spink and co-author Bernard Jansen found that on average, people use two words per query and two queries per search session. "The searches are taking less than five minutes and they're only looking at the first page of results. That's why people are wanting to get their results on the first page," says Spink, who now, along with Jansen, is turning her sights toward metasearch engine Vivisimo.com, which culls results from other search engines and categorizes them for users. "We were surprised that people weren't doing more complex searches. If you put a couple of words into the Web, you're going to get hundreds of thousands of results. I think people aren't trained very well to use the search engines."

posted by Marcus Zillman | 4:20 AM
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