ClickZ: Search Individualized by Demographics

Harris Interactive and Microsoft studied search engine users, finding that almost all Internet users employ search engines, but only half do so every day. Users average two searches per day. The study's reported most popular searches don't come as much of a surprise, as they vary little from the most popular search words published on the search engines themselves: travel, health, entertainment, current events. As with most self-reported studies, the popularity of pornography is hidden, shown only in the search engine log files.

Women and men hewed to their stereotypes, choosing more health and beauty searches and automotive and electronic searches respectively. More interestingly, the searches varied by region, with travel more popular in the Northwest and news more popular in the Southeast.

The study reported that 29 percent of searchers say they rarely find what they're looking for, and about the same proportion say they are somewhat dissatisfied with search results.