"So what is your favorite search engine or directory?" is the question we asked 181 people in an informal focus group.
Our focus group was comprised as follows.
- 181 men and women, aged 20 years old to 64 years old.
- The majority of the focus group said that computers were part of their daily routine, either in their jobs or at home.
- 90% of the group had some kind of post-secondary education.
- Nearly half of the group has earned a bachelor's degree.
- 144 of the participants were Canadian residents. 37 of the participants were American residents.
- Just over half of the group was female.
- 51 of the group were parents.
- Almost half of those parents were single parents.
- 9 of those parents were grandparents.
- 46 of the people spoke more than one
language.
- 5 of the people spoke more than two languages.
- 149 of the participants were employed or were full-time students.
- 32 of the participants were retired or semi-retired.
- 83 of the people have never had formal Internet training.
- None of the participants received any remuneration for participating in this informal survey.
- The great bulk of the polling was done by email and Excel spreadsheet calculations.
We also chose to lump both search 'engines' and search 'directories' together under the notion of 'search services'. The intent was to identify what were the favorite search services amongst our volunteer focus group members.
The question of favorite search engine/directory raised some interesting dialogue with our group.
- Many commented on "speed", and "ease of use" as part of their criteria for answering.
- Others described "lots of hits" and "relevant results" as their main concerns.
- Others said "appearance", "clean look", and "lack of advertising" as other criteria for voting.
- The four librarians in the group said that "breadth and depth and currency of content" was their biggest concern.
After these points of view were debated, we then asked the focus group to list their favorite three search engines/directories. We also asked them to rate their choices on a 5 stars scale.
Using the classic "Delphi Method" of voting, we gave the users a copy of the initial results, and gave them a week to change their minds. Amazingly, about 52 people did change their votes after trying out some of the URLs. Several people commented that they had never heard of some of these search engines/directories, but would now happily use them after this survey.
So after 4 weeks of polling and discussions, the Top 10 Favorite Search Engines & Directories results are as follows:
