The Poor uses Yahoo; Rich ones use Google

A set of data recently released by HitWise suggests a trend on the economic status of people using either Google or Yahoo search engines. The results revealed that those financially well-off are likely to use Google while the lower class ones gravitate to Yahoo.

Furthermore, Google users tend to be the older generation and spend more money online while Yahoo users are the younger people and ones that spend less online.

The graph below shows the age groups as surveyed by Hitwise:

Search Graphs

Despite the fact that Google leads in online search (60+% of total searches), Yahoo is still the #1 most visited website online. Obviously, the population that goes online just don’t do search — they also do emails, groups, answers, news and the lot — which attributes to the massive traffic Yahoo is getting on that front. Google on the other hand doesn’t create its own content.

As I mentioned above, comparing Google and Yahoo from this perspective might has some inherent bias mainly because Yahoo users are more spread out because of the various services it offers while Google is only doing search (okay, maybe mail.google.com as well but those are few and far between).

Rich Poor

In that sense, Google users should have spent much less time on the site because they’d jump off to the target websites right after viewing the search results. Maybe this is the reason why Google went out and added more links on it’s default search page to point out its other services.

In a way, the Hitwise report may be comparing a very sharp paring knife (Google) to a regular all-in-one Swiss Army knife (Yahoo).

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

24 Comments

jhay says:

17 years ago

I’m not rich, I’m young and I use Google more than Yahoo!, so am I an anomaly? :P
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spidamang says:

17 years ago

^not really. I use google too. :D
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Dara says:

17 years ago

I’m wondering about the mechanics of this study. How big was the sample? What’s the margin of error? I don’t entirely buy it, just due to my personal experiences not aligning with the results. But interesting nonetheless, I’d like to see more about it.
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Dusty says:

17 years ago

Hmmm … does this mean that

*Radio Station Analogy*

Google = RX 93.9

Yahoo = 90.7 Love Radio

???

HeHe
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Kiven says:

17 years ago

Abe, US ito ano? Im interested to see what the local stats are hmmm pero it will boil down to what is installed sa i-cafe
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Spidey says:

17 years ago

I love Google… Gmail too.

But Im not rich.
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ballz says:

17 years ago

2 years ago I was poor and I use Yahoo
now that I’m rich , I use Google.

Data seems correct
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blozoom! says:

17 years ago

yay i belong to the rich. but yikes i belong to the old. that leaves MSN/live for what? for microsoft employees.
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Ronin says:

17 years ago

@dusty: i think it’s Monster RX 93.1 :D
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franz says:

17 years ago

Well it depends on what is the definition of poor is.

Poor in America can be considered as filthy rich here in the Philippines.

And poor is very relative. Poor in other countries can be considered as not owning an ipod or a laptop so the study is only applicable to where it was done.
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