IEEE Spectrum September, 2011 - 72

the data
Search Engine ABCs

S

tArt typiNg in a browser's
search box and the search engine
races to complete your query. it's
a great feature that can save you a lot
of time.
the guessing begins the moment you
type the first letter, with results that
can be surprisingly accurate or amusingly off base. Search engine providers
don't reveal their algorithms, but the
theory is that they base their guesses
on what other people in the same geo-

graphic area have searched for when
they type the same initial letter.
but even within regions, what most
people are searching for depends on
what search engine they use. the two
leaders, google and microsoft's bing,
which jointly cover most of the search
market, differ. but together they offer
a snapshot of the world's 536.6 million English-language-using internet
searchers. Here are the top search
guesses from one-letter tests i did in
the San Francisco bay Area in mid-may.

-SwapnajitMitra

I

I Before A: While Apple is never

O

No One Here: Search engines

Z

Location, Location,
Location: Checking out real estate

suggested for A, each search engine
features an Apple product for I.

Search Engines Fill in the Blank

Brands and More Brands:

Out of 26 letters, 21 (81 percent)
of Google's suggestions are names
of organizations and products. Bing's
suggestions for brand names totaled
even higher-about 92 percent (24 letters).

Y

Honesty Is (Mostly)
the Best Policy: Bing, not

surprisingly, selects Microsoft's Hotmail
for H and Google picks Google for G. But
Bing's O is Orkut-a Google product.
Google returns the compliment with Xbox
for X. Things get even more interesting
at the letter Y-Google chooses Yahoo
instead of its own YouTube. Do people
really search for Yahoo on Google?

72

NA * iEEE SpEctrum * SEptEmbEr 2011

A

Amazon

AOL

B

Bank of America

Bank of America

C

Craigslist

Craigslist

D

DMV

dictionary

E

ESPN

e (the numerical
constant)

F

Facebook

Facebook

G

Google

Google

H

Hulu

Hotmail

I

iPad

iTunes

J

JetBlue

JC Penney

K

Kaiser

Kohl's

L

Lowe's

Lowe's

M

Mapquest

mySpace

N

Netflix

Netflix

O

Osama bin Laden

Orkut

P

Pandora

Pandora

Q

quotes

QVC

R

Rebecca Black

RuneScape

S

Southwest

Southwest Airlines

T

Target

Target

U

United

USPS

V

Virgin America

Verizon Wireless

W

weather

www.facebook.com

X

Xbox

Xbox

Y

Yahoo

Yahoo

Z

Zillow

Zillow

don't seem to like people very
much. Google's list shows only two,
known mostly for their notoriety.
Recently Osama bin Laden and musical
flash in the pan Rebecca Black shared
this rare honor (and she was gone by
July). Bing's list is person-free.

values on Zillow is a San Francisco Bay Area
obsession; when this test was run on the
East Coast in July, shoe site Zappos.com
edged Zillow out in Google search results.

spectrum.ieee.org

mckibillo

A

BinG

Top one-letter search-engine guesses, San Francisco Bay Area, May 2011

GooGlE
http://www.facebook.com http://www.Zappos.com http://spectrum.ieee.org
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum September, 2011
