In my blog post yesterday, I had to use the auto-complete feature that search engines provide in order to quickly learn some new perspectives on how society thinks about a certain topic. Though, I figured out that the results weren't society as a whole, but the community of users that use that search engine.
A little background: Search engines want to show the best results to users. One part of how they try to do this is by analyzing the way users use the search engine. Basically, the more times users search for a phrase, the more likely it will appear at the top of the auto-complete suggestions (Yahoo calls this feature "Search assist"). Analyzing a single search engine has been done before, but I in this post I analyze the differences between different search engines.
This answers the question, what type of users use Google/Bing/Yahoo?
The practical uses of knowing the answer to this question mainly lies in ads, or marketing to be more exact. When one purchases Google ads and Bing ads, maybe they shouldn't be using the same copy or text or graphics. The user demographics may be different. This information also helps out the search engine when advertising their product to more users, or adding features for current users.
My search seed for the auto-completion suggestion search was "money in the bank is ".
From a Google search beginning with that phrase, I found:
- "Money in the bank is like toothpaste in the tube"
- "Money in the bank is safe"
- My blog post
- "Money in the bank is stupid"
- "How much money in the bank is insured"
- "Money in the bank is peace of mind"
All of these seem like reasonable perspectives, or at least understandable. When using Chrome's incognito mode, only the last "peace of mind" one shows up.
From a Bing search beginning with that phrase, "money in the bank is " (note the extra space after is), I found:
- "Money in the bank is it m1"
- "Money in the bank in the water"
- "Money in the bank in hot springs ar"
Then I noticed more results when I didn't put the extra space after "is". These results included the ones from above and more:
- "Money in the bank images"
- "Money in the bank injuries"
- "Money in the bank singer"
- "Money in the bank instrumental"
These are very interesting results. The very interesting thing about these results is that it shows what type of people use each search engine! So many things can be said about each search engines' users.
- Google users appear to be straightforward
- Bing users appear to be more influenced by media
- More...
I'm sure there are other excellent phrases to auto-complete-search for also and in a future blog post, I might write about it. So far I have searched:
- "dog " with no interesting distinguishing characteristics
- "cat " on the other hand allows Yahoo to stand about from the others
- "fire" and "fire " are both great. Microsoft stands out in this one, the first four auto-complete suggestions are four Firefox (browser).
- "safety ". Let's see, here's the first auto-complete suggestion for each search engine: Chrome - "safety not guaranteed", Bing - "safety topics", Yahoo - "safety 1st"
Disclaimer: For these quick searches, I used incognito mode in Google Chrome.
If you think of something I missed, then please share it in the comments!
~ Simply Advanced ~
ps - If you would like to find out more information on how I came upon this topic, then there are two more posts I made before this one, in this "series". [this 1] [that 2]
pps - Pictures!
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