Relationships matter: Where you share affects how you search

Although social media sites have been around for less than a decade, they have played an active role in shaping the future and culture of the Internet, and probably will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Search engine marketers have been long studying the web-browsing habits of various demographics — including their choice of browser and search engine. They have seen how these choices impact a user’s likelihood to interact with an ad or of their lifestyle preferences, but how do these choices influence which sites a user visits on the Internet?

When studying this effect, Chitika Insights investigated the relationship between a user’s search engine preference and their social media outlet of choice. Interestingly enough, the seven major social media sites saw large differences in their favorite search engine. Newer, more tech friendly outlets, such as Reddit, Stumbleupon, and Google+ have an overwhelming preference for Google — with 95%, 94% and 85% searching respectively with Google. Conversely, older social media platforms with more established user bases like Myspace search a larger percentage of the time using other engines, like Bing and Yahoo.