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A lot of my searches come from Google, but the list of search words I frequently use are based on miscellaneous school assignments such as, ‘Identity’ and ‘Product Placement ‘which were most recent. I would assume that most of these searches are over the year but a few key words situated at the top of my  list are based on forensics, soccer statistics, medical research, random movies, Google map, My Little Pony(I’m a bit ashamed to mention but I had good reason for looking it up), and Zap2It T.V guide. From an outside perspective I have no idea what they would think, perhaps an active parent that is perceived as a science geek, with no sense of direction hence Google map. Those were just a few of my recent searches but they do seem pretty sporadic. I’m not sure if my search log could be considered useful information to third parties because most of my searches are all over the place. They are not consistent so I think it would be hard to obtain any kind of personal information. A third party could try to cater to what they believe are my interests, such as soccer for instance.  It is not like I search specific key words such as my surname, where I live, anything to really classify my age unless they observe ‘My Little Pony’ then I would be targeted as a 5 year old child. For the most part I would believe that from a third party perspective social networking sites like Facebook, MSN profiles, and Twitter accounts would provide a wider range of valuable personal information that can help marketers advertise to specific individuals.

The key word I choose was “Monster.”

 On Google, Yahoo & Live search engines each had Monster.ca as the first result. All the results were generally the same, but each had lists of job searches in different orders, and something called ‘Monster Cable Products’ in common. What I was expecting to find by typing ‘Monster’ into the search engines was children’s movies such as the more recent Monsters vs. Aliens and Monster Jam. However Google was the only search engine to present the Monsters vs. Alien link while Yahoo provided the link to a movie called ‘Monster.’ What I liked about Google was that they present video results in their search, which I never noticed before. Google seems to generate a variety of links that provide, text, video and picture where as Live and Yahoo only present text associated links. However what I found interesting was that Live was the only search engine to provide a consistent list of job searches along with a Wikipedia site that stated the definition of ‘Monster.’ I found this to be a bit odd because the site is based on a consistent list of job searches but then the 4^thlink down is Wikipedia’s definition of monster. I’m so used to Wikipedia being one of the first links, but it was also strange because it seemed out of place. On a positive note what I liked about these 3 search engines is that they provide ‘related searches’ at the right hand side or bottom of the page which can further help individuals find what they are looking for.

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