Thanks for the clarification.

Regarding the question in your post above about new users switching to Google, I would bet that for pure keyword searches, we see a drop in Google’s new adoption rate. Working against it are smaller and more tightly focused search engines and more less-skilled people buying computers with other keyword search engines preconfigured (MSN, Yahoo, Netscape, etc.) as the default. On the other hand, quite a few alternative browsers are shipping with embedded Google search widgets, Google is developing searches beyond keyword matching, and they’re fielding a top-notch research and development team. There are so many variables that it’ll be neat to see how it all plays out in the end.

The reason it is interesting to note that Google users are not average – the point of my entry and a point I mentioned in the post above – is because so many people draw conclusions about all Internet users based on the actions of Google users. Yet this seems incorrect given that Google users are not representative of all Internet users.

I guess my question is that if you found one search engine whose users reflected the demographic traits of the average user, why is this interesting? Or in other words, let’s assume that “Ask Jeeves” users (whatever that may be) were closest to the average in terms of demographics. I don’t see what it says other than the user demographics of “Jeeves” coincidentally match the computed demographic average. You could title this post “Ask Jeeves users are your average Internet users”, but I don’t see how that would be useful more than as a bit of trivia if Jeeves users are only five percent of the search engine user base.

Maybe I’m missing something here.

Saying what you proposed wouldn’t be very interesting given that Internet users, on average, are not your average Americans either and we’ve known that for over ten years. I guess depending on the particular search engine preference/use breakdown (whichever they used here to calculate their figures) it could be possible to find that users of one search engine actually do represent your average American. That would require that a search engine appeal especially to lower income users to offset the higher income of the average Internet user (compared to the income of the average American household).

“Google users not your average US residents”

If Google commands the majority of search market share among Internet users, wouldn’t its users be more “average” than most other search engines among “users” on the basis of larger representation?

Since Google’s users are not demographically similar to the average US resident, the suggested title above makes more sense, since presumably American Internet users are a subset of American residents. I don’t think that it’s too surprising that the higher incomes are better represented in the pool of users (and better represented among the pool of people who have been online longest), so I would suspect that most search engines’ average users would be in the higher-earning demographics than the regular population.

Do we have any information on what the “average user” was in this study and how far Google and other search engines deviate from that average?