Searching for people on Web search engines

The Web is a communication and information technology that is often used for the distribution and retrieval of personal information. Many people and organizations mount Web sites containing large amounts of information on individuals, particularly about celebrities. However, limited studies have examined how people search for information on other people, using personal names, via Web search engines. Explores the nature of personal name searching on Web search engines. The specific research questions addressed in the study are: “Do personal names form a major part of queries to Web search engines?”; “What are the characteristics of personal name Web searching?”; and “How effective is personal name Web searching?”. Random samples of queries from two Web search engines were analyzed. The findings show that: personal name searching is a common but not a major part of Web searching with few people seeking information on celebrities via Web search engines; few personal name queries include double quotations or additional identifying terms; and name searches on Alta Vista included more advanced search features relative to those on AlltheWeb.com. Discusses the implications of the findings for Web searching and search engines, and further research. Introduction People search the Web for many things, including shopping, sex and information on a near infinite array of topics. Major focuses of people’s lives are other people and communicating with other people. The Web now provides another source of information about people from every country of the world. Ordinary people and celebrities can use the Internet to distribute and seek information. For example, some Web services (e.g. www.classmates.com) provide a way of connecting with your former high school classmates. People also use list serves, chat rooms and e-mail to communicate constantly with each other (e.g. Yahoo! groups). Seeking information on other people is also a key activity in the business and intelligence world (Ayers, 2000; Lane, 1996). Owing to the growth of information about people on the Web, personal information privacy is now a key issue for individuals, organizations and governments (Federal Trade Commission, 2002). Web users often provide personal information through the Web that is processed and sold. Sholtz (2000) provides an overview of the privacy, The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister www.emeraldinsight.com/0022-0418.htm The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments, and AlltheWeb.com and Alta Vista.com for providing the Web query data sets without which thay could not have conducted this research. JD 60,3