People having a heyday w/ AOL data

"A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749"
See NYT article to see what Mrs. Arnold has to say about the world seeing all her searches.

Even tho AOL has removed the data, it is mirrored all around the web.

One of the WMW forum posters wrote this:

" Nope, not too difficult at all for some users. I identified a poster on another another forum I frequent pretty easily by noticing searches for that forum, where his kids to to school, where he went to high school, the neighborhood he lives in, sports related searches, and a cruise he went on. It was pretty shocking to read through the search history and realize "that's so-and-so". And to stress the huge violation of privacy this is, I also know where he banks, who he has his mortgage through, what types of porn he likes, and when he likes to look for it."


This info will be of interest to some:
Compiled from the millions of searches on AOL by WMW forum members who have the capacity to crunch huge databases of info:

Percentage of clicks on AOL searches

By Position

1 - 22.73%
2 - 6.40%
3 - 4.53%
4 - 3.24%
5 - 2.61%
6 - 2.14%
7 - 1.81%
8 - 1.60%
9 - 1.51%
10 - 1.59%
11 - 0.35%
12 - 0.30%
13 - 0.28%
14 - 0.26%
15 - 0.25%
16 - 0.21%
17 - 0.19%
18 - 0.18%
19 - 0.17%
20 - 0.16%

By Page

1st Page (1-10) - 48.16%
2nd Page (11-25) - 3.1%
3rd Page (26-40) - .93%
4th Page (41-50) - .44%

Note: AOL puts 15 organic search results on the first page and 15 on the rest of the pages. That is why you see a much larger % on #10 than on #11

46.58% of searches result in no organic click-through at all. This means abandoned searches and those who clicked PPC results. THAT's a LOT !

"One interesting, if not surprising, thing is how ill-formed the bulk of the queries are. Most people appear not to have a clue about searching and just start typing whatever pops into their head. This lends a large element of chance to the whole venture."

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