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Subject:Google - how far do you go? From:"McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com> To:"techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Wed, 2 Apr 2014 15:44:22 -0400
In your normal, everyday interaction with public search engines (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc.), for roughly what percentage of search instances do you bother to look past page 1 of the results?
Why?
That is, I'm assuming that most people check page 1 of search results and start clicking likely links, or else take a look at what came up as page 1 and decide right away that they need to revise their search, and only occasionally (if ever) proceed to page 2, 3, or (shudder) further.
So ... why do you mostly consider page 1 far enough (if that's what you do), and why do you go past page 1 on those occasions that you do?
I mostly go with hits from page one of search, until I've exhausted the links (or skipped, based on an obviously low-probability summary), and then I might try page 2 or three, though my perusal of links from page 1 has usually given me some hints as to how I might usefully refine my search, instead of going further in the current results. It's been literally years since I went past page 10 on any search. I'm more likely to switch search engines and retry a search than I am to 'go deep'.
On a related note, when you want to look up a term, and want more than a dictionary definition, do you automatically use a standard Google (or Bing or...) search, first, or do you go directly to something like Wikipedia?
Finally, if you are one of those people who think that Wikipedia is not merely ... er.... uneven, but is generally unadulterated dreck on all fronts... is that based on recent visits, or on the last time you bothered in 2007... or was that 2005... ?
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