世論 What Japan Thinks

Here’s a great survey from iShare, looking at the potentially rather dull subject of search engines, but by examining the relationship between usage patterns and browser choice they uncover interesting trends.

Demographics

Between the 29th of June and the 2nd of July 2010 474 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.6% of the sample were male, 27.4% in their twenties, 34.2% in their thirties, and 38.4% in their forties.

I feel that the CLUB BBQ demographic tends to be more technical than the average user, and that is perhaps reflected in the choice of search engine in Q1SQ3 where Google beats Yahoo! by a factor of three to one, despite other surveys with a wider demographic spread indicating that Yahoo! is a few points ahead of Google.

I use Opera and use its built-in toolbar to search Google. I’ve heard from a few people that Bing is actually worthwhile trying out, but when I’ve tried it out it very cleary biases my search towards Japan-located and Japanese-language results and I don’t know how to tell it to take a more global view.

Research results

Q1: Have you ever used an internet search engine from a computer? (Sample size=474)

	All	Male N=259	Female N=215
Yes (to SQs)	93.5%	92.3%	94.9%
No	6.5%	7.7%	5.1%

Q1SQ1: On days when you use your computer, about how many times per day do you search the internet? (Sample size=443)

	All	Male N=239	Female N=204
Once or twice	16.5%	10.0%	24.0%
Three or four times	22.6%	22.2%	23.0%
Five to nine times	21.2%	18.4%	24.5%
Ten to fourteen times	17.6%	20.5%	14.2%
Fifteen to nineteen times	1.4%	1.7%	1.0%
Twenty or more times	20.8%	27.2%	13.2%

Q1SQ2: Which web browser do you currently use the most on your computer? (Sample size=443)

	All	Male N=239	Female N=204
Internet Explorer	45.8%	40.2%	52.5%
Firefox	32.5%	34.7%	29.9%
Google Chrome	5.9%	7.9%	3.4%
Safari	5.9%	5.0%	6.9%
Other	9.9%	12.1%	7.4%

For those in their twenties, Firefox won with 45% versus 32% for IE, but for those in their thirties and forties Internet Explorer managed to reach a majority of users (51%) versus 29% and 27% for Firefox. Safari was almost twice as popular with those in their forties, perhaps reflecting an older demographic for Mac owners.

Q1SQ3A: Which search engine do you currently use the most on your computer? (Sample size=443)

	All	Male N=239	Female N=204
Google	75.8%	84.9%	65.2%
Yahoo!	21.7%	13.0%	31.9%
Bing	0.2%	0.0%	0.5%
Other	2.3%	2.1%	2.5%

Q1SQ3B: Which search engine do you currently use the most on your computer? (Sample size=443)

	All	IE users N=203	Firefox users N=144	Other users N=96
Google	75.8%	60.1%	88.2%	90.6%
Yahoo!	21.7%	35.5%	11.1%	8.3%
Bing	0.2%	0.5%	0.0%	0.0%
Other	2.3%	3.9%	0.7%	1.0%

Q1SQ4: Most of the current search engines display links that allow you to search with your keywords only for images or only in blogs, etc. Do you use these specialised search features? (Sample size=443)

	All	Male N=239	Female N=204
Yes, frequently	21.7%	22.6%	20.6%
Yes, sometimes	47.6%	49.4%	45.6%
Just once or twice	17.2%	17.6%	16.7%
No, never	13.5%	10.5%	17.2%

Q1SQ5A: How do you currently most often carry out searches? (Sample size=443)

	All	Male N=239	Female N=204
Using search toolbar	49.4%	48.1%	51.0%
From search engine home page	42.9%	43.5%	42.2%
Using address bar	5.0%	5.4%	4.4%
Using portal site, news site, etc search feature	1.1%	1.7%	0.5%
Other	1.6%	1.3%	2.0%

Q1SQ5B: How do you currently most often carry out searches? (Sample size=443)

	All	IE users N=203	Firefox users N=144	Other users N=96
Using search toolbar	49.4%	39.9%	61.1%	52.1%
From search engine home page	42.9%	55.2%	32.6%	32.3%
Using address bar	5.0%	2.5%	4.2%	11.5%
Using portal site, news site, etc search feature	1.1%	0.5%	1.4%	2.1%
Other	1.6%	2.0%	0.7%	2.1%

The using address bar option in the “Other browser” category was mostly Chrome users – it was in fact the most popular search method for users of Google’s broswer.