Internet searching trends
The first step to finding relevant information is to determine the appropriate questions. According to graduate schools in information or library science, the reference interview is the key. Librarians talk to their patrons and help them clarify their research problem, ideally keeping the questions narrow enough to avoid being deluged with too much information but broad enough to avoid “zero results.”
Far too many people flock to Google and type in extremely vague queries, only to be frustrated and uninformed after hours of searching. On the other hand, the 50+ year-old man at the joint use public/college library on Saturday was using much more specific queries – Alyssa Milano nude – and was apparently successful, until a fellow patron ratted him out to me (the reference librarian) and I had to go over and reiterate for the second time that day, “You can’t look at porn in the library.” The ironic thing was that the person who alerted me to the porn was a man, probably early twenties, and he was pretty aggravated at the idea that anyone would come into the library and use the computers for leisure activities like porn viewing, online poker, looking at matches on dating sites, etc. He had the idea that people should be (gasp) productive in the library – what a concept!
But I digress.
A 2006 article in the journal Searcher stated “the number of Americans going online [in 2005] only increased 3 percent.” The article then went on to discuss the number of online searches conducted, which had jumped 55 percent from the previous year, and translates to “an increase from a per-searcher average of around 16 searches a month to some 25 searches a month.”
The original source of these statistics is Nielsen/NetRatings, whose senior director of analytics Ken Cassar commented, “The double-digit increase in online search activity marks a significant milestone in the evolution of Internet consumer behavior. Online search is the primary tool most people rely on to do everyday research.”
The point of the article, though, was that the large increase in number of searches translates into a large increase in the number of bad searches – the worst kind being a search result that leads the searcher to think they’ve solved their problem when they’ve really just located some misleading or false information.
My question is – which is it? Since I’ve been using the Internet for research in the early 1990s, the amount of information out there has exploded from just a few university web sites/library catalogs to pretty much anything you can think of. Are people just using the Internet to answer different kinds of questions – not “research” exactly, but movie times, store hours/locations, directions to the nearest Outback restaurant, etc.? That kind of searching definitely accounts for the jump in usage in my house. Or do most people have to search twice in any given situation to find an appropriate answer?
When I’m looking for a specific piece of information, I usually use Google first – so I would always recommend that as a first step. Even if the initial results list is unsuccessful, it usually provides some additional keywords that I can use to clarify my search. Browsing through an initial results list also gives me a better idea of what I DON’T want to see. Depending on what I find, I would then move on to the next step in my research – beyond Google.
Reference:
Quint, Barbara. 2006. Think like a searcher (Searcher’s Voice). Searcher Magazine 14(5).
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E-mail me with what you need and a credit card number. Theresa’s rates are $50/hr. Pretty reasonable.
[…] starts their research with Google, right? In my last post, I mentioned that I always start with Google, and talked a little bit about clarifying search terms […]
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So how do I make my searches more successful?