Searching and CGM
An article in the NY Times today talks about Web search queries and their repurcussions on privacy. What's really interesting about this unfolding story is the perception that our identities are easily revealed via our search history. The article discusses the revealed identity of a 62-yr old woman from Georgia whose identity was revealed through AOL's mistaken publication of 3 months of her queries, among them, "dog that urinates on everything."
Undoubtedly inspired by Jon Battelle's renowned terminology, the journalists refer to search behavior as a "catalog of intentions, curiosity, anxieties, and quotidian questions." This can certainly be true; although how does search behavior measure up against WOM units? Granted it is consumer-generated media (albeit not intentionally permanent), but I wonder its ability to predict intentions, or really anything about our identities, as compared to other forms of CGM. We know very little about the relationship between searching, online buzz, offline recommendations, buying behavior, or even traditional media coverage. Searching vs. buzzing (online WOM) might be a good place to start. My feeling is searching is probably a pretty valid precursor of WOM; WOM in turn, might be a stronger predictor of a higher-order variable. Both are very quantifiable...
