AP article on new web searching studies

[Jerry Kuntz]

Interesting new AP article on new web search behaior studies: 
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6345251/ 

The lowdown: 
--Searches for sex/pornography are down drastically in past seven years, from 20% of all searches to 5%. 

[Editorial comment: can the hysteria over Internet porn threatening the next generation stop now?]

--Average search is 2 word per query, 2 queries per search session, with only the first page of results viewed. 
Quote: 
"We were surprised that people weren't doing more complex searches," Spink said. "If you put a couple of words into the Web, you're going to get hundreds of thousands of results. I think people aren't trained very well to use the search engines." 

[Editorial comment: is this the behavior we're trying to encourage with federated search tools?]

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Jerry Kuntz
Electronic Resources Consultant
Ramapo Catskill Library System
jkuntz at rcls.org

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