Saw this post over at Dan Ariely‘s Predictably Irrational blog (a recommend addition to your RSS reader). Dan is a Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University and a visiting Professor at MIT. His book, Predictably Irrational is on my read list at LinkedIn.
Dan used Google in a way most of us (me at least) haven’t thought of yet – researching human behavior. We do use Google to search for stuff, but Dan hasn’t searched for anything. He merely started typing and waited for Google’s predictions – the drop-down list that opens up, suggesting you search queries, based on what other people frequently looked for.
What women are looking for
The query Dan started typing was:
“how can I get my boyfriend to” and “how can I get my girlfriend to”. The results are hilarious, but proves what the entire world already knows: men are practical, women are after love… 😉
What men are looking for
Also funny to do “wife/husband”
😎
This technique can be used to find search trends in many areas, except for one …
Try “Christianity is” and “Islam is” and compare the suggestions.
Seems like their software has converted to a particular religion (or is smart enough to know who will *not* turn the other cheek 🙂