Social Networking, Curiosity or Voyeurism?
Sites like Google and Bing are showing the precise questions that are most frequently asked, giving everyone a chance to peer virtually over everyone else's shoulders.
There are the questions you ask friends, family members and close confidants. And then there are the questions you ask the Internet.
Search engines have long provided clues to the topics people look up. But now, sites like Google and Bing are showing the precise questions that are most frequently asked, giving everyone a chance to peer virtually over everyone else's shoulders at what they are all curious about.
And the sites are revealing interesting patterns.
Frequently asked questions include: When will the world end? Was Neil Armstrong Muslim? Was George Washington gay?
The questions come from a feature that Google calls "autocomplete" and Microsoft calls "autosuggest." These anticipate what you are likely to ask, based on questions that other people have asked. Simply type a question starting with a word like "is" or "was," and search engines will start filling in the rest.
People who study online behavior also say the autocomplete feature reveals broader patterns, including indications that the questions people ask of search engines often veer into the sensitive and politically incorrect.
"Your search engine is your best friend, and you talk to it about everything, even things you might not talk about to your real best friends," said Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of Search Engine Land, a Web site that covers the search industry. "It's a way that search engines reflect society."
One category of question comes up with puzzling frequency in autocomplete: whether a certain person is gay.
Is the singer Elton John gay? Is the U.S. politician Paul Ryan gay? Is the mayor of New York, Michael R. Bloomberg, gay? The question pops up often, too, when starting searches about the actor George Clooney, the New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, Genghis Khan, several cartoon characters and even the pope.
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Social Networking, Curiosity or Voyeurism?