Jim Jansen, who teaches information sciences and technology at Penn State, hasn’t figured out how advertisers can best take advantage of these real-time searches, but he and a team of researchers found quite a bit of money-making potential in the questions average people pose on social-networking sites. A study they recently released in the journal Information Processing and Management examined more than 1 million queries posted online during 190 days in 2009. The team then determined how much Google advertisements based on the same queries would be worth if the searches were posted on Google. The total estimated value was $33 million.
Jansen’s team found quite a bit of overlap between what people search for on social networks and the queries they pose to search engines the one exception being that hardly anyone seeks pornography on social networks. In both areas, common queries include information about celebrities, technology and health. Social networks also lent themselves to searches about happenings in a certain geographic area.
Jensen says he’d be interested in taking this information to study how companies can most effectively use real-time searches to reach a wider audience. Some businesses have been successful at using Twitter and Facebook to interact with existing customers but not so much at connecting with potential customers, he says.
Source: Jim Jansen, Penn State University
Writer: Rebecca VanderMeulen