世論 What Japan Thinks

Regular readers will know that the most popular search engine in Japan is Yahoo!, with Google just a few percentage points behind, but what do people do at these sites? This recent survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com looking at web search tried to answer these questions.

Demographics

Between the 8th and 12th of September 2008 1,060 members of the goo Research monitor panel (the report actually says goo users, but I don’t know how accurate that is) completed an online survey. 51.9% of the sample were male, 11.6% in their teens, 22.2% in their twenties, 22.0% in their thirties, 19.0% in their forties, and 25.3% aged fifty or older.

Ego-searching is looking for your own name in the search engines. Not suprisingly, lots of relevant information turns up about me since I’ve got a unique double-barrel that I use online a bit. However, my full birth name turns up absolutely zero, which is not surprising as I don’t often use my middle name.

Research results

Of the 1,060 people in the sample, 7 had never used a search engine. The remaining 1,053 were asked the following question.

Q1: From the list of search subjects below, select all the ones you have performed on computers. (Sample size=1,053, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Product, brand names	968	91.9%
Company names	906	86.0%
Web site names	861	81.8%
Movie, book titles	834	79.2%
Shop names	832	79.0%
Locations, addresses	771	73.2%
Television program names	671	63.7%
Entertainer, etc names	631	59.9%
Own name (to SQ)	480	45.6%
Friends, family names	401	38.1%
Telephone numbers	366	34.8%
Never searched for any of the above	3	0.3%

Q1SQ: Did you find information on yourself? (Sample size=480)

Yes	57.3%
No	42.7%

When asked what they had found, the top answer of the 275 people who found information about themselves was their own site, be it blog, SNS or profile site, with 44.7% discovering it. 40.0% found news or other articles about themselves, and 34.2% found their names on school or work registers, which might very well be a breach of privacy laws.

Q2: Have you accessed a search engine from a mobile phone? (Sample size=1,060)

Yes (to SQ)	61.0%
No	30.7%
Don’t have a mobile phone	8.3%

Q2SQ: From the list of search subjects below, select all the ones you have performed on mobile phones. (Sample size=647, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Web site names	350	54.1%
Shop names	344	53.2%
Product, brand names	299	46.2%
Locations, addresses	258	39.9%
Company names	223	34.5%
Movie, book titles	214	33.1%
Television program names	135	20.9%
Entertainer, etc names	120	18.5%
Telephone numbers	87	13.4%
Own name	23	3.6%
Friends, family names	19	2.9%
Never searched for any of the above	25	3.9%