Welcome to the home of Noah Brier. I'm the co-founder of Variance and general internet tinkerer. Most of my writing these days is happening over at Why is this interesting?, a daily email full of interesting stuff. This site has been around since 2004. Feel free to get in touch. Good places to get started are my Framework of the Day posts or my favorite books and podcasts. Get in touch.

You can subscribe to this site via RSS (the humanity!) or .

Are People Getting Better at Search?

Anecdotally I’d say the answer is yes. But I’m specifically asking because of this question on Snarkmarket: “I wonder what else Google might have taught us. Has the nature of our Google queries changed over time? Do we type fewer words? More? How does our use of Google compare to the first generation of search engines?”

A quick search around turned up a few things. First off, in 2008 the average query length jumped from three to four words-per-search. Also, 25% of queries are unique to the last month (which seems like it would favor more specific searches). Anyone have any more data on the topic?

February 10, 2009