This feels like dog bites man but…
SEARCH ENGINE USE HAS CONTINUED to surge in the last year, according to a new report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and comScore Networks. Forty-one percent of 1,577 Internet users surveyed by Pew in September and October reported that they had visited a search engine the previous day. When Pew conducted a similar survey in June of 2004, just 30 percent of Web users said the same. In fact, the only Web activity more popular than searching was using e-mail; about 52 percent of U.S. Web users told Pew researchers they had sent or received e-mail on the day before being surveyed this fall.
In fact, the only Web activity more popular than searching was using e-mail; about 52 percent of U.S. Web users told Pew researchers they had sent or received e-mail on the day before being surveyed this fall.
This seems vague. Do they mean webmail, or e-mail in general?
“The web” is not synonymous with “the Internet” despite the linguistic usage of the masses. I use e-mail every day, but it has nothing to do with my web browser or surfing habits.
If this report is meant to highlight what people do with their web browsers then the data seems, from my chair, to be at best poorly explained, and worst, somewhat skewed. If the report is meant to reflect what users’ TCP/UDP packets are doing for them in general, the findings make more sense.
After skimming the full report (PDF) it seems the latter is the case (they include instant messaging as an activity).
I suspect, and will posit, that if the non-webmail users were to be filtered from these numbers we’d see that search is as common an activity in most users’ browsers as is e-mail. At the very least, the gap would narrow considerably. Which is a very interesting statistic, indeed.
Search is the most popular activity, but I use visual interface for google.com – Quintura search
http://www.quintura.com/quinturasearch/