Not just information: Who searches for what on the search engine Google?

Abstract

This paper reports on a transaction log analysis of the type and topic of search queries entered into the search engine Google (Australia). Two aspects, in particular, set this apart from previous studies: the sampling and analysis take account of the distribution of search queries, and lifestyle information of the searcher was matched with each search query. A surprising finding was that there was no observed statistically significant difference in search type or topics for different segments of the online population. It was found that queries about popular culture and Ecommerce accounted for almost half of all search engine queries and that half of the queries were entered with a particular Website in mind. The findings of this study also suggest that the Internet search engine is not only an interface to information or a shortcut to Websites, it is equally a site of leisure. This study has implications for the design and evaluation of search engines as well as our understanding of search engine use.

The Web as History

“…Another approach is to use aggregate ranking sites such as Alexa (http:// www.alexa.com/ ), but otherwise little is publicly known about who uses the web in general. Two exceptions are Waller (2011) who has examined information seeking by Australians, and Segev and Ahituv (2010) who provide a more global perspective. Wu and Taneja (2016) have more recently contributed to our understanding of attention paid to the world's top websites by grouping them by format and genre and in terms of their popularity.…”

Social Theory after the Internet

“…Yet studies suggest that the vast bulk of Google searches are for consumption, with only a tiny proportion (1-2 per cent) devoted to political information and other 'serious' types of information. Even more surprisingly, what people search for is very similar across the world, and cuts across how populations are stratified in terms of economic and status groups (Waller 2011a). The implication is that it is important to focus on the small proportion of information for political, health, education and research -or what I will single out as 'serious' -uses.…”

“…A different approach is quantitative, and we have already encountered the study of search engine use in Australia (Waller 2011a), which found that the vast bulk of content sought relates to consumer activity and popular culture. In the light of the distinction between serious and non-serious information that has just been made, it can be mentioned that less than 2 per cent of search queries in Waller's study related to 'serious information' such as civic, health and political information.…”

“…But while Wikipedia provides a source that is widely regarded as reliable for serious matters such as health, most of the content that is sought on Wikipedia via the dominant search engine Google, again, concerns popular culture and the like (Waller 2011a), which arguably falls into the category of leisure rather than 'serious' information. But once more, this is also true of search engine uses generally, which are mainly used for leisure and consumer-related information seeking around the world (Segev and Ahituv 2010).…”

The Online Visibility of South African Knowledge: Searching for Poverty Alleviation

“…There is substantial evidence of the use of search engines on the Internet as a widely used, indeed, primary mechanism for finding information (Waller, 2011), and Google's dominance among search engines is well established (Google has 80.9% of market share, according to StatOwl) 2 . As early as 2007, studies showed the prevalence of Google in academic use of the Internet across a range of disciplines (Nicholas, 2007).…”