Search until you drop

Pew Internet’s latest report about the Internet starts with a pretty obvious statement: “search engines have become an increasingly important part of the online experience of American internet users”.

The most recent findings from Pew Internet & American Life tracking surveys and consumer behavior trends from the comScore Media Metrix consumer panel show that about 60 million American adults are using search engines on a typical day. These results from September 2005 represent a sharp increase from mid-2004.

The effect of age on propensity to search is interesting. Sorry about the definition, they are Pew’s not mine.

On a typical day these are the percentages of Internet users, in each generation, who use search engines:

GenY (ages 18-28) 42%
GenX (ages 29-40) 51%
Younger Baby Boomers (ages 41-50) 37%
Older Baby Boomers (ages 51-59) 39%
Matures (ages 60-69) 31%
After work (ages 70+) 25%

What I find surprising about these numbers is the relatively low percentage of 41-50 year-olds and the high numbers of 70+. In all the other studies I have seen, from Pew and other researchers, there is a steep fall-off in Internet use post-65. So there you have it – Older Baby Boomers and 18-28 year olds are approximately equal users of search engines (certainly within the error levels of this research).Interesting stuff.Dick Stroud