Wednesday, 13th September 2006

Sex Searches Shrink: Numbers Contine Down According to Leading Web Researchers; Hitwise Data Center Offers Search Terms & Top Search Engines For Various Countries

We'll be brief here since just last week we posted about Dr. Amanda Spink loaded with plenty of her writing. Today, this story from The Age about web search term usage. Dr. Spink and her frequent co-author/researcher Bernard Jansen report:

From the article:

Once upon a time, in the mid '90s, sex accounted for 17 per cent of web searches, but that figure has shrunk to 3.8 per cent, Queensland University of Technology's Professor Amanda Spinks said yesterday...The research focused predominantly on web searching in the US and Europe. Professor Spinks said there were multiple reasons behind the fall of sex-related topics from the top spot. "It could be the favourites are bookmarked," Professor Spinks said. "More women are searching the web. Back in the '90s, it was probably young male geeks."

The "sex" number also continues to decrease from 2004.

From a 2004 SEW Blog and AP post:

"Twenty percent of all searching was sex-related back in 1997, now it's about 5 percent..."It's a little bit more in Europe, 8-10 percent, but in comparison to everything else, it's a very small percent," Spink said.

Here are just a few links to the interesting research by Dr. Spink and colleagues from 2006:

+ How are we searching the World Wide Web? A comparison of nine large search engine transaction logs. (2006)
Spink is a co-author with Dr. Bernard Jansen.

+ A study of results overlap and uniqueness and among major web search engines (2006)
Spink is a co-author with Dr. Bernard Jansen.

+ Multitasking during Web search sessions. (2006)
Spink is a co-author with Dr. Bernard Jansen.

+ Toward an evolutionary perspective on human information behavior: An exploratory study (2006)

Again, MUCH MORE on Dr. Spink's page including several recent publications (full text).

NOTE to The Age and the AAP, it's Dr. Amanda Spink not Spinks.

Thanks to ResourceShelf contributor Carey Lening for the news tip.

See Also: Hitwise Data Center Offers Search Terms & Top Search Engines For Various Countries

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