As reported on BoingBoing and elsewhere, the Pew Internet and American Life Project has released some new survey results about the ways Americans use search engines.

Among the list of unsurprising findings:

• The daily use of search engines is second only to e-mail as the most popular online activity.
• 68% of users think search engines are unbiased, a finding which correlates well with another finding that 62% of users are unaware that search engine content is influenced by the distinction between sponsored and un sponsored results.
• Men and the young are slightly more search savvy than women and adults.

Among the list of annoying methodological problems:

• Pew regularly releases long reports based on telephone interview surveys without releasing the survey questions. Maybe I’m the only one who cares about that.
• These reports make headlines that the media can latch on to with findings like “55% of searchers say about half the information they search for is important to them and half is trivial.” Of course, in the context of a telephone survey the distinction between ‘important’ and ‘trivial’ is practically meaningless.

Skeptical comments:

• I wonder how much these kinds of surveys are influenced by the difference between what they say they do and what they actually do. One thing I haven’t seen much research on (perhaps because I just haven’t found it) is the cultural stereotypes and prevailing beliefs about using the internet. Last year I asked a class full of undergraduates what using the internet means to them, and they said something like this:
  It used to be that the people who were tech. savvy and used the internet a lot were ‘un-cool,’ but as of about 2001 is has become ‘un-cool’ not to be involved with the internet.
• I question the finding that 2/3 of people could walk away from search engines with no problem for two reasons:
  1. 1. I wonder if there is a desire to be (or appear to be) unreliant on technology. Here in particular I wonder how they phrased the question.
  2. 2. I’m not sure how well a finding like this reflects people’s actual experiences. Example: My parents and grandparents are all internet enthusiasts, but despite my patiently explaining the workings of a web browser to them many times, they don’t seem to get it. When they want CNN, Yahoo, Amazon, or the NY Times, they open up Internet Explorer and type that in the address bar, invoking IE’s auto-search feature. If you asked my parents if they could live without Google or Yahoo, I bet they’d say yes, not understanding their real reliance. This is just one example, of course, but it makes me wonder if it’s just that simple.