Curiosity got the best of me, leading to my perusal of the AOL Search Database. While there are plenty of interesting nuggets in there, I can't say that I was particularly shocked by this peak into the search behavior of my fellow web users. People are different. They have different tastes. Some even like watching cars make left turns for hours and hours.

The Washington Post is reporting that heads have rolled at AOL over this serious security breach. The privacy violation was extraordinary, but I think the leak may have a positive side effect by helping web searchers understand just how much information search engines know about them. This may also help people understand why it's a big deal when the government asks search engines to hand over search records.

Moving on: Here are my top three observations of search behavior based on the AOL search data:

1. Searching for known domains. I'm amazed by how often people search for domains. Why would someone search for the term Yahoo day after day rather than typing Yahoo.com into the address bar? Or, why not just bookmark the site or change the homepage to Yahoo if that's the site they prefer over AOL?  I also saw a ton of searches for the term Google, which leads me to believe that some AOL users prefer Google's presentation of Google's results to AOL's. Or maybe people don't realize just how "Enhanced by Google" AOL's results really are?

This type of searcher's life could be improved in 10 seconds by someone updating their homepage for them.

This really goes to show how much disparity there is between search newbies and experienced web users who seek out solutions like del.icio.us,  Google Bookmark Sync, and RSS aggregators to help manage their favorite sites. At the other end of the scale is the bookmarking system I've seen in the homes of web newbies consisting of URLs scribbled on post-its framing their monitors.

2. People can't spell. It's amazing how many typos people make when searching. It's possible that the fast speed of search engines allow people to be lazy with their searches. I bet people would be a bit more careful if there was a 3 second delay rather than the almost immediate response search engines deliver today. Search engines have become more forgiving for poor spellers over time. Additionally, pay per click ad platforms have gotten better at serving relevant ads to poor spellers. Anecdotally, the sponsored results are often more relevant than the organic results on typo terms.

3. Massive health related searches. I previously realized that online retail, real estate, travel, porn, and entertainment searches (music, celebrity, movies, lyrics) were all extremely popular verticals, I hadn't realized what a large percentage of web searches were related to health issues. From how to get pregnant, prevent pregnancies, being pregnant, birth, raising children, symptoms, symptoms, symptoms, to searches on information related to every illness a person encounters up to end of life searches related to heart disease, cancer treatments, and funeral arrangements. It looks like the web has become the go-to source for health related information. I think my relative good health over the history of the web to date has put me out of touch with this type of search.