You Have Questions – Google Has Answers
What’s the square root of Pi? Who led the NBA in rebounding in 1988? Are there really rattlesnakes in Vermont? Is Silly Putty edible?*
Here’s another question for you: Where do you go for answers online? If you’re not sure, we suggest that you ask Google, because that’s where almost everyone submits their online inquiries these days.
To make it a bit more scientific, we decided to make this question the topic of our weekly “What Do uThink?” poll. Here are the results from the uTest Forums:
- Google (search) – 91%
- Wikipedia – 4%
- Bing (search) – 2%
- Other – 2%
Clearly, Google pretty much owns the online answers space, which came as no surprise. However, when we posed the exact same question to our Facebook users the results were slightly different. Google still came in first place, but with “only” 53% of the total vote. Rounding out the totals were Wikipedia (18%); YahooAnswers (12%); Bing (6%) and WikiAnswers (6%).
So what makes Google the go-to place for answers? uTest Forums member “scornik” explains:
- 90% of the time Google shows the expected result in the first page, so users don’t have to waste time looking at other search result pages.
- The Google search page design is very simple looking, yet very effective to all kinds of users. At first visiting the Google web page, users instantly know what this website is all about and what it’s main functionality is.
- Google is still avoiding showing advertisements at their home page. That’s a very tough thing to do. When I first started using Google, I was very satisfied by not seeing ads or other unrelated things before I performed a query. So thumbs up to Google.
Leave it to Google to cancel their “Google Answers” feature and still be the #1 place to find answers online. Make that two thumbs up.
So where do you go for answers online?
*Oh, and in case you were wondering:
- The square root of Pi is 1.772453850905516027298167483314
- Michael Cage of the LA Clippers
- Apparently yes, there are rattlesnakes in Vermont, but only in Rutland County
- Silly putty is NOT edible (trust me)
If you have suggestion for a future “What Do uThink?” poll, send them along.
