Slashdot Mirror
The Demographics of Web Search
adaviel sends a link to work out of Yahoo Research indicating that demographics can help Web searches; e.g. a women searching for "wagner" probably wants the 18th-century German composer, while for men in the US "wagner" is a paint sprayer. The Yahoo researchers claim that by taking user demographics into account, "they managed to get the chosen link to appear as the top-ranked result 7 per cent more often than in the standard Yahoo search." New Scientist mentions this research and two other innovative adjuncts to current search practice: following the mouse cursor as a proxy for eye tracking, and taking back bearings on online criminals by studying the searches they make. (The latter raises disburbing privacy questions: would you want Google trolling through your search data? How about governments?)
Isn't Yahoo pretty much in the process of outsourcing their search to MS?
One that hath name thou can not otter
What's really amusing is that two people posting mutually exclusive answers are currently at +3 and +4.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Modded insightful twice too... I guess some people can't be bothered to think for themselves and just moderate to increase whatever the current moderation is.
I've seen that trend from time to time -- it becomes most obvious when two people make essentially the same comment; one gets modded up, the other modded down.