Slashdot Mirror
The 7 Ways That People Search the Web
SpaceAdmiral writes "After the recent release of AOL search logs, Paul Boutin used the site splunkd.com to analyse the logs. His analysis groups searchers into seven categories: The Pornhound, the Manhunter, the Shopper, the Obsessive, the Omnivore, the Newbie, and the Basketcase. My favorite example search is in the Basketcase category: 'i hurt when i think too much i love roadtrips i hate my weight i fear being alone for the rest of my life.'"
The seven ways that people post on Slashdot.
The First Poster - Although this phenominon has been addressed and has somewhat lessened, there are still echoes of "First Post". These people wait on a "Mysterious Furure" story as post stupidities just to get in first.
The Fisher - These posters, rarely named Bobby, check-in with a kingly posts to generate replies and nothing more. Their posts, perhaps at first, seem to make sense, but on closer review contain mnay misstakes, intentionally designed to garner replies.
The old-timer - These posters, who hang around slashdot land, have forgotten to move on. They post just to show off their low slashdot id. This makes some druel, and others comment that low id does not mean more intelligent. However, they're all wrong anyway.
The reposter - Reposters wait for old stories to come up again and find modded-up comments from the old stories to repost. If this is the first time such a story is up, they post a bunch of old buzzwords that realign synergistic paradigm shifts.
The soap stander - Soap-Standers have what to say, and don't care where they say it, such as about why Bush is beery good, and that the UN and its anonymous leader are drunkards, and no amount of coffee will help.
The idiot - Idiots can't count, post moronic comments, and quickly type in useless garbage to fill in a little more space.
Have you read my journal today?
Somethingawful posted what is presumably the first part in a series of gold from the AOL search logs: http://www.somethingawful.com/index.php?a=4016 These would definitely fit in the 'basketcase' category...
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
I know that I often can't recall websites I've been to once but want to revisit. I will, however, often remember the search terms that got me there -- sometimes very specific search terms, since I've narrowed it down from my first wide-net search.
For some reason I stubbornly don't use bookmarks often (as when you have too many, they quickly become worthless) so that obscure search term might be in my profile 300 times over the course of a year if it's a site that I visit daily from the office.
Then again, I post on Slashdot a ton... I'm sure it's pretty obsessive anyway.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
"For we are all the Pornhound, the Manhunter, the Shopper, the Obsessive, the Omnivore, the Newbie, and the Basketcase, sincerely, the Breakfast Club"
Probably most people on this board are too young to remember anyway....
From TFA: The searches of AOL user No. 672368, for example, morphed over several weeks from "you're pregnant he doesn't want the baby" to "foods to eat when pregnant" to "abortion clinics charlotte nc" to "can christians be forgiven for abortion."
That, right there, tells you why we need to worry about "Uncle Sam" having access to *everyone's* search logs - search terms alone contain an implicit picture of what should be some of the most private aspects of your life. Now imagine if user number 672368 turns out to be, say, John McCain's daughter, and Karl Rove got his hands on this just before the Republican presidential primaries...
what do you think would happen? what do you think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthyJoe McCarthy could have done with this kind of data? Write to your elected official and ask them these questions, and what safeguards they are putting in place to prevent any such abuse - and tell them you will be voting this fall. Then call your local news channel, and ask them to run a story on it, and ask the candidates for comment. The big networks won't start a story like this, but if a small station is lucky enough to get a clip of a politician stumbling over an answer, it'll be syndicated faster than you can say "feeding frenzy".
(and for those of you naive enough to think that Karl Rove doesn't have access to the equivalent government databases through some back-room contact or another, I have a bridge you might be interested in buying...)
"Do niggers have x-ray vision" Truly frightening. Also note the large religious influence in a lot of the searches.
The analysis denotes an astoundingly low level of understanding of how people actually use the web. What the author is seeing is absolutely normal and obvious. The only abnormal thing is his surprise.
The Pornhound. The fact that people search for porn on the web must rank as the discovery of the year!
The Manhunter. Who ever bookmarks other people's web pages? I just type the people's names in Google, and most people I know do just that. We are all manhunters I guess.
The Shopper. Same as above, who uses bookmarks? If I am interested in a treo 700 and I type it 37 times in 3 days, this just means that I find it more convenient to type treo 700, then select from the search results, that bookmark the result pages that I am interested in. And this is reasonable: why should I create bookmarks that become useless once I do buy the treo?
The Obsessive. See above. People that search often for A are simply people who don't bother creating a bookmark for some results about A. Big discovery.
The Omnivore. Ok, so when the pattern is complex, the author gives up. This is a really informative category.
The Newbie. Again, it must rank as one of the big discoveries of the year that there are newbies on AOL...
The Basket Case. This seems to be a repeat of "the omnivore", except that the author found these queries weirder.
Who posted this on Slashdot? It's not interesting research at all! It's junk!
I guess it means that people who are smart enough to have correct spelling are also smart enough not to want to see people fucking animals.
Or at least they don't use AOL searches to find it.