The effect of search engine keyword choice and demographic features on internet searching success

Abstract

The objective of this project was to determine the effect of keyword choice and demographic features on Internet searching success through empirical research. An experiment was done with 1,109 learners, spread across forty-six institutes of higher education on three continents. A variety of relationships were then inspected: that between the number of keywords used, age, race, and gender, and the searching-success rate. The results proved that the first three of these have measurable effects on searching success, while gender has only a marginal effect.