Percentage of Sex-Related Web Searches
Is Down by About Half Since 1997, While Business Searches
Are Up by 86 Percent
New book by Pitt professor "is about
the only book that says what people are really doing" on
the Web PITTSBURGH -In
the last seven years, the percentage of Web searches on
sex has declined, while that of business-related searches
has gone up, according to a new book on Web searching coauthored
by a University of Pittsburgh professor.
 These trends are among those found by Amanda Spink, associate
professor of information sciences at Pitt, and coauthor
Bernard J. Jansen in their book Web Search: Public
Searching of the Web (Springer). The book is based
on studies Spink and Jansen conducted between 1997 and
2004. Jansen is assistant professor of information sciences
and technology at The Pennsylvania State University .
"It's very difficult to find information on how people
are searching the Web because the Web companies are very
cagey about giving any information," said Spink. "Because
we were fortunate enough to get data from different Web
companies, ours is about the only book that says what people
are really doing."
Spink and Jansen found that, even in the past few years,
what people are searching for has changed significantly,
moving away from searches on sex-which have declined by
almost 50 percent since 1997-and entertainment to searches
on business and e-commerce, which have increased by 86
percent.
Within this overall decline in sex-related searches, however,
one type of search stood out, said Spink: When people are
looking for multimedia (images, audio, or video) on the
Web-which generally means pornography-the number of queries
they search for, and their complexity, increases. "When
people are searching for multimedia, they tend to do more
queries, particularly if it's sexually related," said Spink. "And
when people are searching for multimedia, they seem more
agreeable to doing more advanced search features."
When sex isn't involved, though, people don't seem to
want to work as much at searching. Since 1997, searches
have remained short and simple, with an average of two
words per query and two queries per search session. Also,
most people won't look past the first page of results,
so companies vie to get their pages up at the top of the
list with sponsored links. People expect search engines
to be simple to use-and companies market them as such.
However, search engines aren't actually designed that
way. "The fundamentals of most of the retrieval systems
being used now were developed back in the 1950s and '60s,
and a lot of them haven't changed," said Spink. " If you
look at the Web search engines, most of them don't have
as extensive functionality as the electronic library catalogs.
For example, many search engines don't allow many date
limitation options. Why isn't there that level of functionality
with Web searches? "
Also, no search engine covers more than 20 percent of
the Web, even though people think they're searching the
entire Internet, said Spink. Even "meta" search engines
like Dogpile, which get results from many search engines
at once, don't cover the whole Web. As a result, people
may not be searching as effectively as they could be.
And this ineffective searching doesn't apply just to the
Web, but also to companies' electronic databases, with
major results: According to a 2001 study by the International
Data Corporation, companies are losing millions of dollars
a year because of bad searching. "If you're expecting people
to do their work and search electronically to find information,
then that's a really big economic issue," said Spink.
Not only do companies need to make their search tools
easier to use-users must do their part as well, Spink says. "You
can't rely just on the technology improvement, because
it's going to take a long time. People need to learn how
to search and be better-informed consumers of these systems," she
said. "I think it might take a generation, unless we make
a national investment in realizing that we need to do this."
Spink and Jansen are currently studying the search engine
of Pittsburgh-based Web search company Vivísimo
(http://vivisimo.com); the company will use their findings
to improve its engine's usability. |
