Search Engines
To determine which search engine is the most popular and why.
Theory & Background
Have you ever wondered about this fascinating scientific process? Internet search engines are useful and even essential to finding the information you need on the world wide web. It is important to know which search engine is the most popular and why – is there a search engine that performs better than another? Is there a search engine that gets more relevant hits than another? Answering these questions by performing this simple experiment can help you choose to use the most powerful and accurate search engine available on the Internet.
Required Materials
- Computer with internet connection
- Volunteer students or adults
- Journal or logbook
Estimated Time
About an hour, maybe more depending on how many volunteers you wish to interview for the study.
Step-By-Step Procedure
Find four popular search engines. Ones you will most likely want to use are Google, AOL, MSN and Yahoo.
List questions you would like to ask your volunteers about the search engines in question. Which one do they use most often? Do they use only one? Do they use more than one? If so, why? If they use MSN or Yahoo search engines, do they do so because they have an email account with that particular provider? Why do they use the search engine that they do? Is it faster? Do they get better results? Does it have an image and video search? A news search?
Ask a variety of volunteer students and adults if they’d be willing to answer some questions about their search engine preferences. Interview as many students and adults as you’d like.
Experiment Tips
- Keep a list of the most popular reasons people use their search engines. You will probably discover a trend – more than one person will likely give the same answer or a similar answer. Keeping track of multiple answers of the same type will help you graph your results later.
Observation
Record all data as you interview people. Record their gender and age, as well as which search engine they prefer and why.
Result & Conclusion
When you’re finished interviewing volunteers, graph the results. Which search engine was the most popular? Was there a tie? Of the search engine that was most popular, did many people give the same reason as to why they chose that search engine? From these results, you can determine which search engine is the most popular and why people are gravitating towards this particular search engine. You just might find that one works better than another!