Archive for the 'misc' Category

You Are What You Search

Monday, August 14th, 2006

AOL researchers recently published the search logs of about 650,000 members – a total of 36,389,629 individual searches.

AOL’s search nerds intended the files to be an academic resource but didn’t consider that users might be peeved to see their private queries become a research tool. Last weekend, the Internet service provider tried to pull back the data, but by that point it had leaked all over the Web.

If you’ve ever wanted to see what other people type into search boxes, now’s your chance.

Which type of surfer are you?

  • The Pornhound – Big surprise, there are millions of searches for mind-bendingly kinky stuff.
  • The Shopper – AOL’s logs reveal that searches for “coupons” are a lot more common
  • The Manhunter – The person who searches for other people.
  • The Obsessive – The guy who searches for the same thing over and over and over.
  • The Omnivore – Many users aren’t obsessive—they’re just online a lot. Their search terms, while frequent, show little repetition or regularity.
  • The Newbie – They just figured out how to turn on the computer.
  • The Basket Case – AOL being a pretend therapist who only responds to your problems (“I am sad”) with more questions (“Why do you say you are sad?”).