What are the top 5 ways people use search engines and the web for?

  • Purposeful Use
    • When users wish to accomplish a task quickly and efficiently. They may fire up a laptop or turn on their mobile phone in order to do so.
  • Opportunistic Use
    • Using the Web as a form of past time. Rather than going online to accomplish some task, users look for things to do ‘while they are there’, calling to mind curiosities and interests.
  • Orienting
    • When users browse a routine set of sites to ‘warm up’ for the day or settle in at work, for example. This tends to involve looking through roughly the same sites in the same order at the same times during the day.
  • Respite
    • When users look to a core set of sites, such as the news, webmail or social networks, for a short period of time (maybe only seconds), as a way of breaking from other activities.
  • Lean-Back Internet
    • Using the Web as a conduitto stream media, such as radio, video or games.

For more information see: http://aka.ms/zpask3