Searching for "How To…"

I’m always intrigued to lurk around and see what types of things people are searching for. Luckily, there are some sites out there like Hitwise that make it fairly easy.

What kind of insights can be gleaned through this type of voyeurism? Good question. Try visiting Google and searching for… (Just kidding.)

A recent Time Magazine article examined the emerging use of search engines to do more than perform simple queries. Increasingly, we’re asking these tools to sort through mountains of data to answer philosophical questions (why?) and instructional ponderings (how to?) It’s the second of these that recently caught my eye.

Did you know, for instance, that over the last two years, the How To question asked most often has been “How to tie a tie?” Seriously, haven’t we gotten this down yet?

Other notables:

“How to make out?”
“How to kiss?”
“How to have sex?”
(Those seem obvious, but I might be missing something. Now I’ll have to check.)

“How to levitate?” (That’s one I’d actually like to know.)

“How to get pregnant?” (No comment.)

Regardless, it’s an interesting look at culture through our common queries, which now account for almost three percent of all searches.