Google Users more Wealthy, Net Savvy

evil_breeds writes "A study by S.G. Cowen & Co. says that Google users tend to be richer and have more Internet experience than users of the other search engines, including Yahoo!, AOL, and Microsoft's search, according to an article on Infoworld."

Comments

That can't be

[dg41]

I know plenty of hippies that use Google.

Re:That can't be

[leonmergen]

... then you must be Wealthy, Net Savvy enough to keep up the average... kudos to you my friend! :-)

Re:That can't be

[Galston]

Yes. I for one have to set the hounds on those pesky hippies that venture in the grounds of my manor house trying to use their 'yahoo' on my wireless conection.

Quick!

[TCM]

Everyone use Google and wealth and wisdom will ensue!

One step closer

[RasendeRutje]

I think we're one step closer to Miscrosoft paying us to use their search engine...

Not very surprised

[mcvos]

AOL and MS's Search are places you're directed to by your OS or ISP. Google is independent, so going there requires a bit more independent thought.

Actually, Yahoo! is also independent, so apparently there's a hole in my theory. Can anyone explain why Yahoo! users are less intelligent than Google users? Has it something to do with that exclamation mark?

Re:Mac users

[HexRei]

I suppose you have some citations for this claim? I'd buy that Mac users are on the average wealthier (Macs are more expensive) but as someone who has supported both PC and Mac users in a wide variety of circumstances, I don't see much difference between the two in regard to "net savvy".

since we are always discussing microsoft

[way2trivial]

and their 'funded' windows v linux TCO studies..

I'm curious who paid SG Cowen for this one?

they don't generate this stuff for fun, they do it for income-- what's the source of the income that enables them to produce such a report?

anyone? know anything about the corp? I find little on the site of the company to fill in the blank...

Re:since we are always discussing microsoft

[akuma(x86)]

SG Cowen is a wall street investment bank. Their analysts get paid to do research on publicly traded companies.

They may have a position in google stock in which case they would try to find information to suggest that the stock should be priced higher. They may do investment banking business with google which introduces a conflict of interest. By law (regulation full-disclosure), the analyst needs to disclose such positions or investment banking relationships if they exist.

Their clients may have positions in google stock or be interested in buying or selling google. They pay the analysts for their reports. Accurate analysts develop good reputations and draw more business to the bank.

Re:since we are always discussing microsoft

[tpgp]

I think the main problem people have with the Microsoft funded studies is the conclusions they come to do not match people real world experiences.- hence questioning the source makes sense.

Whereas this 'study' elicits a 'well duh' type response.

1) People who have been on the 'net longer tend to be more educated.
2) Better educated people tend to be wealthier.
3) People using the 'net longer tend to use google 'cause it works well.

*shrugs*

Rich?

[OverlordQ]

Will all you rich Google users please send this Broke College Student some money?

Re:Rich?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will all you rich Google users please send this Broke College Student some money?

Just give me your Bank Account Access Details, Account Type, Password Table and Payment Confirmation Codes and I'll put 100.000$ to your account.

Sincerely,
Robert Guie
Nigeria

Re:Rich?

[chillmost]

Will all you rich Google users please send this Broke College Student some money?

Why don't you just google for it?

Could it be

[zappepcs]

that Goooooogle users actually know what they are looking for when they search on the Internet, and so use Goooogle, and people that don't know what they are looking for are happy with whatever Yahoo! and others dish up?

I know I use Gooooogle because I'm able to use it to find what I want to find, and normally in the first page. This is not so with other search engines. I may be biased by personal taste, but that seems to show some difference that might explain the headline?

Re:Who Doesn't Google?

[tsa]

Yes. And all those people are too poor to be able to afford an internet connection.

No word on...

[Scareduck]

... more attractive to the opposite sex just yet, though I'm sure that if Google could get you laid, you'd think I'd've heard about it by now...

Re:No word on...

[headLITE]

After I first met my gf, we didn't see each other for months since she lives halfway across the country (of course, said country being Germany, that wasn't as bad as it sounds). We started to exchange e-mails, currently totalling over 4k messages. I'm fairly certain our ability to look up information on Google and impress each other with it played an important part in this. Thousands of e-mails from the same person tend to be boring if there's never anything new in them. That was in 2004. We've been "officially together" for the better part of 2005 and she's finally moving in with me this month. Thanks, Google.

Google makes you smarter

[alchamy]

Since the first time I started using google it has always impressed me, the ease of use and accurate search results were just the beginning.

For me the best thing about Google is that you can use regular expressions in your search strings which really gives you the best possible results, sure other search engines allow expressions but none as complex or effective as those found in google.

Whenever I need to know something or understand something better I do a quick google and within minutes I have the information I need.

I can think of several occasions where something gets mentioned in a meeting etc and I honestly have no clue what people are talking about, while they are still talking I can do a quick google and be back on track within seconds. The "define word" function is one of my favorite ways to get quick answers.

Other search engines just don't do it for me, the results are not nearly as accurate and the excess adverts/banners slowing down the entire process really annoy me.

A google user truely has the world at his/her fingertips.

Re:Google makes you smarter

[alchamy]

Perhaps it was a bit bold to say regular expressions, its more permutations since it supports words and not letters.

But you can do things like "word * word"

You can also do something like this

"(I|He|She) (can|may|will) (search|find|locate)"

I agree with you that they would never (not atm) allow the public to have access to something that is turing-complete.

Re:Mac users

[sm3ggy]

http://www.internetnews.com/stats/article.php/1403 581 There is a citation for you.

Google was good, going down?

[ATeamMrT]

What made google so appealing to people was the interface, there was no advertising. There was one blank page with an input box to do a search from. Google seperated advertising from searching at a time when other engines like Excite were filled with junk that distracted.

Today, Google seems to be going in the other direction. Offering more services, integrating more advertising.

Just the past 6 months, I have noticed a new form of advertising by Google. In the past, there would be the advertising on the right of the page, and the advertising on top in the blue or green box. But now they sneak in 3 or 4 searches on the first page mixed in with the regular searches as advertising. Google is tempted to make money, and it will burn thier support.

Who knows, maybe someone else will start a search engine. Google came around at a time when Yahoo and Excite dominated, but Google made a product easier to use. I remember my first time using Google... I was at Yahoo to search for something when someone said "Why don't you try google, check it out". I was hooked.

The past few months I have been using Yahoo more for a few reasons. Maybe reason #1 is I got tired of Google having so many websites listed so high that was spam.

The other thing which turned me off to Google was I started a website and wanted to add it to the listings. Google would not add my listings for six months. And mine is NOT spam. Why is spam listed so high, but legitimate websites are not?

Re:Google was good, going down?

[(1 -sqrt(5))*(2**-1)]

Just the past 6 months, I have noticed a new form of advertising by Google.

Would you mind linking to an example?

Re:Google was good, going down?

[Narc]

teoma.com is pretty nifty, doesnt sneak in sponsored links. Clean interface.

Re:Google was good, going down?

[jav1231]

I don't know where you're going, but Google still has a plain, no ad page when I go to their main page.

Re:Google was good, going down?

[OmnipotentEntity]

I think what the grandparent mistook for ads are the misspellings links.

For example, if you do a search for "profit" it will give you 3 links to sites, then ask if you meant "pro fit" and give you 3 links from there, and then finish out the rest of the page with results from "profit."

It looks suspiciously cluttered for google, and I also mistook them for ads the first time I saw them.

Re:Google was good, going down?

[gaurzilla]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q= prescription&btnG=Search This is probably what he means.

Re:Google was good, going down?

[Paraplex]

Google have put a couple of 'neat' things in their search engine, but the web is seeming smaller and smaller because of their pagerank system.

I believe a search like "stumbleto's" search is along the right path. Its not there yet, but based on a database of your liked and disliked pages it could essentially understand a "context". eg if you search for "Birds" you're going to get all of the pages relating to real birds ranked far higher than pages relating to "hot birds". You're also going to get sites that agree with your disposition toward the subject (eg. bird-hate sites would rank a lot lower because there are more links between separate bird-like sites and fewer linking this cluster to a cluster of bird-hate sites)

Furthermore I think searches (image searches specifically) should be tagged and have their ranks change dynamically as visitors visit the sites. So an image or a website that is clicked on under the search terms "native bird" will be tagged as such and relationally linked to other pages creating a community context and therefore ranking more relevant items higher.
Users should have a limited ability to moderate searches by selectively nuking items which are irrelevant to the search terms which in turn would change the tags associated with it

Anyway, I think context based personalised searching is where the future of searching is at and stumbleto has the headstart on this.

Re:Google was good, going down?

[Sean0michael]

Firefox does have an extension that pretty much does what you want it to do. It's called CustomizeGoogle. It works through 1.6~, features lots of customizability (my own word there) and has been given reviews as one of the best extensions to Firefox.

Get the extension here https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?id=743&application=firefox

That is, assuming you use Firefox ;)

Hold on....

[sdo1]

...while I put my surprised face on.

Joe Average goes to his local Best Buy, Circuit City, or other mega-store and buys the PC that the pimply sales dweeb recommends. He doesn't know a Gigahertz from a megabyte. He unpacks his PC, plugs it in, answers yes to every question the computer recommends he answer yes to. He opens the browser and it points to MSN. His twelve year old daughter's friend uses Yahoo messenger, and therefore so does she.

Is anyone surprised that the technically non-savy and generally lesser educated segements of the populous don't know what's out there and pretty much just take what's fed to them? Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of well educated and afluent people who don't have a clue either.

-S

Re:Hold on....

[ichigo 2.0]

http://www.google.com/search?q=plumbing+backs+up+f ix :)

Re:Hold on....

[Rydia]

That's a really great statement, and I don't think it can be emphasized enough. I'm a techie and now a lawyer, but once upon a time I spent a summer working in maintenance. There are so many things that people who slashdotites look down on can do it boggles the mind... and it's not just advanced stuff, it's knowing how to wire something properly. Computers won't give you that. Sure, most of the guys didn't go to college. But they're certainly not stupid. They're sending their kids to college because they want opportunities for them. They watch jeopardy and all that good stuff. You read /. long enough and you get the idea that everyone else here thinks that "joe sixpack" really is a permanently inebriated, dirt-eating idiot. That's really unfortunate, and it doesn't reflect well on us as techies.

If you ask...

[Skiron]

Jeeves he says to use Google too!

Erm... duh

[kiddygrinder]

Ah, i think it's just that people who are smarter can figure out how *not* to use the default msn search in ie

Dialup portals

[TallMatthew]

AOL, MSN and Yahoo (via relationship with SBC) are all dialup providers. It's not surprising their portals are visited more often by the, erm, underprivileged.

The Shark has been Jumped

[pedantic bore]

Wake me up when there's some "stuff that matters". Or when the Google fanboys go off and start up a "GoogleDot" web site (which will be the best thing ever and spend five years in beta...) and we can have more stories about swimming hamsters.

Re:The Shark has been Jumped

[garcia]

They need to have google.slashdot.org and then people could block this stuff. Better yet, pointless-google-stories.slashdot.org as well as google.slashdot.org so we could seperate out the true trash from the slightly overrated trash that the editors have been pushing lately.

Macs & Googe

[mslinux]

Mac users who google are the smartest, wealthiest people on the planet.

Re:Mac users

[jimktrains]

Oh, you mean that *nix distro with an AWESOME GUI? Yeah I use it. I also use google the most often because it looks better in Lynx.

On a more serious note: Some people don't use google? Even the semi-computer illerteate people I know use google and nothing else. It's like second nature to most everyone, I thought.

Either wrong or article is missing something

[broothal]

From tfa: "The longer people have been using the Internet, the more likely it is that Google will be their search engine of choice" and "people whose primary search engine is Google are more likely to have household incomes above US$60,000"

  You can't conclude that. It's like saying "I'm left handed. I like linux. Therefore, all left handed like linux". What they have found out is, that people with more experience has a higher paid job. There's no statistical evidence tying it to their search engine of choice.

"Google also emerged as the search engine of choice, with 52 percent of respondents choosing it as their primary engine for general Web searches. Yahoo came in second with 22 percent, while Microsoft's MSN and AOL tied for third place with 9 percent."

That survery is good to see which search engine is the most popular. Google obviously is. But if you only have 9% MSN users in your statistical material, then you can't compare them. You need to compare groups of similar size.

Re:Either wrong or article is missing something

[santiago]

From tfa: "The longer people have been using the Internet, the more likely it is that Google will be their search engine of choice" and "people whose primary search engine is Google are more likely to have household incomes above US$60,000"

    You can't conclude that. It's like saying "I'm left handed. I like linux. Therefore, all left handed like linux". What they have found out is, that people with more experience has a higher paid job. There's no statistical evidence tying it to their search engine of choice.

Yes, you can conclude that. The phrase "more likely" does not imply causation, merely correlation. If the data you gather shows that two factors are correlated then, without even trying to construct a causation model for this correlation, you can use one as a predictor of the other. The article is merely saying that the longer a randomly-selected user has been using the internet the likelier it is they use Google, and that the fraction of Google users with incomes over $60,000 is higher than the fraction of non-Google users with incomes over $60,000.

That survery is good to see which search engine is the most popular. Google obviously is. But if you only have 9% MSN users in your statistical material, then you can't compare them. You need to compare groups of similar size.

No, you don't. There is no statistical requirement that various groups you are trying to compare be of similar size in order to make comparisons. There is only a requirement that all your groups be sufficiently large to have a high likelihood of being representative of the population from which they are being drawn. WIth 1000 users and 9% MSN that's only 90 users, which is probably not enough to draw broad conclusions about MSN's user base, but the study as a whole seems to be mostly comparing the 52% Google users to the 48% non-Google users. That certainly seems like a reasonable number of samples to support the conclusion that Google use, technical experience, and income are all positively correlated.

Make a donation

[vivekg]

Now I can ask all my site visitors coming from Google to make a donation as they are rich :D

Heh

POP! goes the ad revenue

[krygny]

This seems almost like some contrived effort to increase Google's ad revenue. Now, when Google negotiates an advertising agreement, they can cite this. Poor, dumb people (who have computers) don't use Google? Virtually everyone uses Google. I wouldn't claim to know, but I'd think the Google demographic is that of the general population.

bad news dude...

[way2trivial]

um-- you have ad/trojan/spyware.. I had this exact same thing..
in made my google results always have commercial sites turn up in/mixed in with the results.
looked really good- but none of the adslime had cached version links available

Not really... (Yahoo independent)

[hackwrench]

http://sbc.yahoo.com/

The whole "less savvy" thing appears to me to be due to marketing to less savvy people.

I don't know about you ...

[Woldry]

... but I'm definitely putting "Google user" down on my next loan application.

Re:Mac users

[HexRei]

That survey is 3 and a half years old and identifies the reason that mac users (at that time) were more net savvy as due to the fact that half of them had been online for at least five years. Three+ years is plenty of time for that factor to swing in a different direction.

Big surprise!

[BushCheney08]

Well, I know that this is a huge surprise for everyone. *rolls eyes* Keep in mind that people who aren't netsavvy have no idea how the internet works at all (big shock!). I've seen many people who open up a browser, get sent to MSNs or AOLs page or wherever the latest hijacked homepage is, then type the address that you give them into the search bar there. They don't realize there's a difference between an address bar and a search field on a page. Every time this happens, one more hit for MSN, Yahoo, AOL, etc. Only people who go out of their way to get to Google (setting it as a homepage, installing Firefox, etc) use it. By these actions alone, it shows that they're more netsavvy. Can't say anything about the affluence part though...

The Mac Demographic

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's customers are like no others--a rich blend of the most sociologically elite with those seeking elegant, simple computing... Unlike users of Intel/Windows computers, a significant portion of Apple's users are active , exploratory , avant-garde and early adopters . The activities they enjoy are unique in the way that they more often incorporate rich media such as video and music as well as more active prosumer behavior than many more passive Windows [and Linux] users.

-- MetaFacts, Inc.

With above-average household income and education levels, the Mac population [is] very attractive [ intellectually as well as physically .]

-- Nielsen/NetRatings (as quoted by C|NET)

Re:Who Doesn't Google?

[pla]

You mean they actually found a computer user that doesn't use Google?!? Not just one, but a whole group of them?!?

I found it hard to believe as well, until I started my most recent job (from pure software to "everything and the kitchen sink")...

I intially started giving new PCs Firefox with Google as the homepage, as most people I knew preferred it that way.

People complained loudly, wondering where the "internet" had gone.

So I started changing the FireFox icon to MSIE's icon. Still didn't help much...

I finally realized that everyone wanted MSN as their home page.

Unbelievable, but it made all the complaints go away... people even like FireFox, as long as I set the homepage to MSN for them.

I just don't get it. if you want prepackaged ad-heavy content thrown at you, why not just watch TV? Well, I suppose people can't watch TV at work, whereas they can justify a few trips to a "legitimate" site such as MSN a few times a day.

The ladies should know

[Pedals]

I'm single, and a Google user.

Re:Mac users

[Fred_A]

Oddly enough a lot of people I know insist on using Yahoo. They admit that google has a cleaner interface and better results but they still use yahoo.

It's a bit like those people that can't manage to switch to Firefox. They tried it, saw that it worked just as well or better than IE, had better features, and still used IE.

I've given up on figuring them out. It must be something like religion, it doesn't make any logical sense.

Re:Mac users

[TheRaven64]

Probably, since the search box in Safari goes to Google. It's always google.com, however, which is irritating. I filed a bug over a year ago saying that it should be localised for non-US people, and it was marked as a duplicate, but still hasn't been fixed.

Re:Mac users

[ZeonMan0079]

"It's a bit like those people that can't manage to switch to Firefox. They tried it, saw that it worked just as well or better than IE, had better features, and still used IE."

I have always believed these kind of people think IE is more "official" or something (installing "that other program" won't do, even though they install every mini-"game" that comes in cereal boxes), and because Yahoo! and MSN smack them 15 of their other services in the ir front page they use nothing else (They use either (MSN || Yahoo!) Messenger ONLY, etc.

They still probably have the 15 shortcuts to AOL, MSN, Compuserve, etc. in their 50 shortcut 800x600 desktop.

Google is the epitome of good desing, unobtrusive on the outside but yet full of substance.