Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why It Matters

by Bill Tancer

What time of year do teenage girls search for prom dresses online? How does the quick adoption of technology affect business success (and how is that related to corn farmers in Iowa)? How do time and money affect the gender of visitors to online dating sites? And how is the Internet itself affecting the way we experience the world? In Click , Bill Tancer takes us behind the scenes into the massive database of online intelligence to reveal the naked truth about how we use the Web, navigate to sites, and search for information--and what all of that says about who we are. As online directories replace the yellow pages, search engines replace traditional research, and news sites replace newsprint, we are in an age in which we've come to rely tremendously on the Internet--leaving behind a trail of information about ourselves as a culture and the direction in which we are headed. With surprising and practical insight, Tancer demonstrates how the Internet is changing the way we absorb information and how understanding that change can be used to our advantage in business and in life. Click analyzes the new generation of consumerism in a way no other book has before, showing how we use the Internet, and how those trends provide a wealth of market research nearly as vast as the Internet itself. Understanding how we change is integral to our success. After all, we are what we click.

Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Technology, Internet, Psychology, Sociology, Science

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Bill Tancer is the general manager of global research at Hitwise, the world’s leading online competitive intelligence services. Tancer and his team of analysts are widely quoted throughout the industry on the latest Internet trends. He appears as a frequent guest on CNBC, has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Washington Post and USAToday on topics ranging from the state of e-commerce to predicting American Idol winners using search term research. Tancer also writes a weekly column for Time magazine (Time.com) entitled "The Science of Search.".

Reviews

[Remo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Todo mal. Es demasiado antiguo (habla de MSN como buscador válido para detectar tendencias), hace una cantidad intolerable de autobombo, el autor es a la vez el narrador y tiene una voz y una dicción claramente inferiores al mínimo requerido. Nos habla de análisis e datos como si fuera una profesión para unos poco elegidos, unos pocos sacerdotes del oráculo, y luego las conclusiones que nos cuenta son las obvias. Muy decepcionante.

[Megan Brisbin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bill Tancer, the General Manager of Hitwise Global Research, writes an insightful book about the internet and the use people get out of it. Being that Tancer works at a research company he is very good at getting useful information for the readers to have. He presents many valuable arguments for what the majority of people do on the internet and how often search engines are used. He searches to find out how many people actively use the internet and how many participate in search engines and pages such as Wikipedia.
Tancer’s book also discusses the how the internet has blossomed and made things so easy for people. We as a society are moving from hard copies of books, newspapers and journals to online solely visual copies. We have also with the internet become a lot more passive in our learning we do not take the time to understand we will merely type things in a search engine and trust any answer that pops up.
In his book Click he also addresses the fact that Prom dress sales happen so early in the season, and this is due to the fact that we have the world at our finger tips. Why take the time to go out when we can sit in the comfort of our own homes and waste hours looking for what we want. Tancer also argues that the internet has fed our “I need it now” syndrome. We can get our quick fixes or catch up on any celebrity gossip or TV show that we may have missed. We can get everything we need whenever we want it.
Tancer did a wonderful job of researching and letting the readers know what we have taken part in with the internet. He researched and found out that most people do not actively participate in the internet we mainly lurk on the internet and find the quick fix or the first answer that pops up in Google. His research of finding out what most people do on major search engines was surprising. He found out that on places like Wikipedia the 45-54 year olds are the main group of people who actively participate in changing the data. He explains this as the old teaching the young(Tancer 125).
The internet has become our how to guide. I know in my personal life anytime I need and answer I just go to Google and type in my question. It is the easiest way to get an answer. Although, I never take the time to see where the answer I am getting and using is coming from, I merely just trust what is on the internet. Which directly correlates to his research stating college aged people only search and find information they do not actively participate in the internet(Tancer 126-127).
I am also a little ashamed to admit, but I am one of those thousands of girls who start to look for their prom dresses in January. I searched every online sight and spent endless hours finding the perfect dress. I am also one of the people who see and interesting headline and read parts of the article or watch the short clip to find my weekly gossip or to stalk my Hollywood crush. The internet is my main source of
information and is where I spend most of my time. It was very nice to be able to relate what he was saying in the book to my personal life.
Click was a very eye opening book and is so true in many ways. I think that this book brings forth many good points about today’s internet usage. It is sad that most of the people who actively contribute are the people who are 25-45, when the internet is mainly viewed by people in their teens to college age. It shows that all we do is look and trust all everything we see and we do not play an active role in our learning. Tancer presented the internet very well and gave a lot of good insight and information on what actually takes place on the internet.
If you are interested in seeing how the internet is used via search engines or see what the majority of people do on the internet this book is for you. Also, Tancer is very easy to understand and he explains his research very well. I got a lot out of this book and feel it was well worth my time to read it

[David Natiuk · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I Love Data" would be the theme of this book and one of Bill Tancer's signature lines. Click is a journey into the information collected online from tens of thousands of internet users and what this data says in its purest form. And what it says is often fascinating and different than what we might expect.

I believe the most fascinating aspect of online collected data is that is might give us a much more accurate window into people's real interests, habits, activities, even fears. A major problem with surveyed data is the challenge of getting people to accurately answer questions they might not want to answer properly. For example, how many people would want to answer accurately how often they visit online pornographic sites if they were asked by a surveyor?

Another fact that is obvious in this book is how rapidly the online landscape can change. Even though this book came out in 2008, the prevalence of MySpace is a jarring example of how quickly giants fall and new players take over the landscape. Internet time truly feels 10 times faster than traditional time.

By it's very nature, reading this book seems like an anecdote in history... seeing charts (as interesting as they are) from times past and which are obviously changing all the time. If anything, this book suffers from this phenomenon even as it does a great job of pointing out interesting differences in what we think and what the data shows. Some of my favorites are that fear of public speaking is NOT the #1 fear and that online demographics skew younger & more affluent (making them unreliable in predicting outcomes of things like TV Reality shows with primarily older audiences).

Another result of reading this book is you get an inside look at how almost real-time data is changing the way companies need to do business. Who would think that January was the prime-time for prom dress searches online... or that dieting searches are at their LOWEST during thanksgiving. Bill Tancer also points out some interesting studies of the effects of great product placement and it's corresponding google search spikes!

This book really gives you a sense of how interesting the collective data from online activity can be, and how it gives a much better picture of who we are and what we do. It certainly gave me a desire to seek out more current data, to follow Bill Tancer & HitWise more closely, and to realize the marketing potential of getting relevant and accurate data quickly. Fascinating read! If not immediately applicable, it certainly is conceptually stimulating.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bill Tancer has immediate access to a fantastic resource - the searches performed across the Internet. He can be listening to a TV program in the background, hear an interesting item, and instantly execute a query to see what the online world of multitudes of searches reveals...this is a benefit of being general manager of Global Research at Hitwise.

I just happened to glance at the cover of this book in passing and picked it up for a quick read (it's only about 200 pages with charts throughout). Online research and analytics, although essential in today's connected world, can often be a dry subject. Tancer removes most of the boredom with a quick, personable writing style. Although some of the topics are not of direct interest to many (prom dresses, celebrities, etc.) the often surprising findings are used to illustrate the unexpected relationships Internet behavior is revealing. The history behind the rise of many elements of Web 2.0 (MySpace, YouTube, Wikipedia, Facebook, Google and others are all covered here) is also explored and actually makes for some really enjoyable reading.

However, with the huge resource Tancer has at his fingertips I hope he can also someday do another volume on perhaps less marketing oriented subject matter. So much research could be in different fields of science, art, and culture. Will we ever be able to google an immense database of Google searches?

Take a scan through Click and you'll likely find something of interest and occasionally raise an eyebrow. As Tancer says, "If you want to understand the new connected world and how we choose live it, look no further than our Internet behavior."

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a short book, but engaging and entertaining. The examples with which Tancer illuminates his points, such as his explanation of the observation that prom dress searches spike in January rather than April or May, are specific and counterintuitive enough to be very interesting. I'm jealous of his access to such specific aggregate data - his job sounds like a fun one.

Tancer does get it wrong sometimes, though. His book came out just a bit too early to take into account the final results of the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, and while he makes some good points about the problems of polling by phone when many Americans have stopped using land lines altogether, Tancer's assertions about the increasing inaccuracy of election polling have been contradicted by the stunning success of Nate Silver, whose FiveThirtyEight demonstrated conclusively that it is possible to project election results accurately and well, if one is careful enough about statistical method.

I think it'd be interesting to see what someone such as the aforementioned Silver, with a more thoughtful and sophisticated statistical approach to data, would make of some of the special access that Tancer enjoys... but Tancer certainly did well enough.

[Ed · Rating 2 out of 5]

My review: Eh.
Additional comments: Parts of it read like an elaborated resume, or sounded like someone at a job interview. It wasn't exactly what I was expecting, so I'll take the blame for some of my disappointment.

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really nothing special. I expected more than a series of "neat things Bill Tancer figured out with Data!" A HitWise press release in hardcover disguise.

[Boni Aditya · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are some pretty neat insights in this book.

But the book is mostly filled with anecdotes i.e. what the author has seen first hand.

Can we use this insights elsewhere? Of course not.

Most of the chapters begin with a story about what the data says. The data in this case related to search often shows something really interesting and sometimes absurd and contrary to reality. The author then goes digging deep into the rabbit hole till he can understand why that data is so absurd.

The author makes bold claims about how he can use data to predict the future, i.e. how he can use the data to make strong predictions about what the outcome of some event might be.

This is where I am disillusioned.

Most of the knowledge of the author is in hindsight i.e. he can only understand the behavior of the users after they react to it at a later time. Future predictions about user behaviors are often always wrong. Click is a book about how the author played detective with data available from search engines. His obsessions with understanding search trends and finding explanations about why the data is spread in a particular fashion.

Let's say the author derived an insight from some data, it is highly unlikely that the insight can be used for another set of data. Every data set is unique. There is zero overlap. So there is pretty much no learning from this book. Yes you might learn some intriguing behavior explained by the author about american idol voting, the purchase of prom dresses, about the worst time of the year and many other behaviors. But the behavior of the group does not and cannot be imposed on the individual.

I do analytics on my products too. I use clever tap, mixpanel and other analytics tools to reach conclusions about the user behavior and form hypothesis, not conclusion. Then I would go ahead and do A/B testing on the hypothesis to confirm if the assumptions are indeed right. If they are not right we would then do a follow up with multivariate tests to get futher insights into the behavior. These are experiments.

Without research experiments i.e. carefully controlled environment it is albeit impossible to understand the data and the user behavior. The author carefully collects all the anecdotes where he got lucky or where he could solve the puzzles in data. What the author carefully avoids or ignores all the puzzles that he could not solve. I firmly believe that the puzzles he solved are far less than the puzzles that he had not and could not solve.

The Analytics tools have now become super advance, with hotjar and other tools like userexperior I can record the entire screen of the user and watch the recording to understand user behavior far better than mere data. I can view each session in isolation and understand each user.

This is far more reliable and conclusive behavior than big data or data in huge numbers.

I love the examples, it is entertaining but does not really add much value to the analytics field.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is interesting for someone in ecommerce like me, however I think I'm just a victim of the time I read this, which is about 10 years too late. The author speaks at length about myspace and google+ and other forgotten about platforms and we continue to see the internet move so quickly it's impossible for anyone to possibly keep up. However the insights around audiences and behavior is still helpful for the reader and some could be applied today.

[Merell Turner]

“Hello, I’m conducting a survey on behalf of _________ market research firm. Would you be able to answer some questions about your interest in online pornography “(p17)? Imagine a call like this just as you are about to sit down to dinner. How do you respond to a question of this nature and is there any reason to believe that you are answering the questions truthfully? You are more than likely going to abstain from answering such private questions. So how does a market research firm get honest feedback about the topic? They know that most individuals confide in the comforts of the internet. They pose their most private questions for an anonymous source to answer such as “Google”. Individuals feel safe because of the lack in judgment. This is where Bill Tancer and his analyst team come into play.
Bill Tancer, the author of Click, is a manager at one of the most competitive intelligence services. He studies Internet trends to gather data about consumer behavior online. He has over twelve years of experience in this field and heads a team of analysts in United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. A lot of his work can be found quoted in many magazines, such as Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and USA Today. He is fascinated about the activities people take part in online and explores this in Click which gives unexpected insights for business and life.
In Click, Tancer is trying to stress the amount of influence technology has on lives of people today. His majority audience is based on marketing teams. He reveals how to market products on the basis of what people search for on the Internet. His minority audience is average consumers. He is making them aware of how they are targeted by businesses through what they search for also. One of his key points involves the utilization of the Internet as a means to an end. He demonstrates the way people turn to the Internet as a source of knowledge in neglecting to read a book. He also raises an interesting motto, “You are what you click.”
In reading this book one of my goals was to explore this motto. He is basically saying, as a nation backed by advances in technology every day, individuals tend to turn to the Internet for everything. There is expression of deepest feelings on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace. Exploration of potential products to be purchased is done here. Obsession is broadcasted through the various searches conducted for celebrities. Businesses are able to conclude what will happen outside of the online world based on what is happening inside the online world.
Overall the book gave insight as to what consumers are doing online. Tancer made many conclusions about groups of people based on information obtained from extensive research of topics. Being a teenage girl, one of the studies that caught my attention the most was about prom dresses. He expresses that the biggest time for retailers to maximize profit from prom dresses is in January. He poses that there are two groups of girls. One group is from the suburbs, in which many of their decisions and outlook on life is influenced by what they read in magazines. For this reason, magazines that go on sale in December start to emphasize the importance of prom which directly affects this particular group of girls by making prom a top priority. The other group is from a less economically stable family. They don’t indulge in fashion and look at prom as an obligation rather than a privilege. They end up getting a last minute prom dress from a local department store. For this reason, they are not the target group retailers are trying to reach in January.
This is rather interesting to me since I started my search for my prom dress in January. I didn’t think media had any effect on my life. I also didn’t think I fit into the category of the group of girls from the suburbs. After reading this book I looked at my life. I realize fashion is a big part of my life. I take pride in what I choose to where to school and how my hair is done every morning. Also, I realize what I wear is affected by my friends as well. Taking a step back, I observe the taste in clothes my roommate and I share opposed to the other girls at school. I disagree that my life is shaped solely on media and the Internet, but it does influence it.
Generally, the book was good. It was very informative. It cautions consumers as to how they are able to be taken advantage of by marketers. It provides anecdotes that make it easier for readers to follow the arguments. Many of the other readers complained that it was boring which I think was a prime example of one of his arguments. Tancer suggests that people are so used to having information at their fingertips that they don’t want to read more than they have to, to answer a question. In this sense, I agree that the life of individuals is greatly impacted by the Internet. I disagree with some of the predictions he claims he can make by searches, such as who will win American Idol. I think he is over analytical about the data he finds on the internet and misinterprets it. Individuals can search on the basis of general curiosity without any underlying purpose. I would definitely recommend this book to someone, but rather a teacher than a friend.

[Goran · Rating 2 out of 5]

meh...

[Jazmin Rambeau · Rating 2 out of 5]

We Are What We Click

Many people believe that the true character of someone can be observed when no one else is watching them. This is probably true because when people are alone, they don’t have anyone else there to judge them or look down on their behaviors. I think everyone can agree that the internet has become one’s greatest ally when it comes to opening up while one is alone. People can search whatever they want with no one else knowing what they are looking at…or at least that is what people think. Bill Tancer and a team of others from Hitwise Competitive Intelligence Services gather information about what people are looking at on the internet everyday. The searches that people make are not as secret as they might think. In Bill Tancer’s book Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why It Matters, he explores how people spend their time on the internet and why that information is beneficial to businesses and marketers everywhere.
Tancer’s book mainly consists of examples on interesting data searches he has conducted on what people are searching everyday. He shows how the data found on internet searches can predict aspects of the economy. For example, he uses prom dress searches as a way to benefit dress companies. Surprisingly, most “prom dress” searches are in January which means that is when most high school senior girls begin looking for their dresses (Tancer 49). This is valuable information for these companies because they can know when to do the most advertising, and can also adjust their prices accordingly. Other searches that Tancer conducted included: biggest fears, reality show winners, unemployment rates, life-style wellness, daily habits, porn searches, and many others.
The author analyzes how online search patterns can effect the way an idea can grow. He explains how there is a strong correlation between searches on social networking sites, and the same searches on popular search engines. He uses musical bands as an example. I can relate to this because I use social networks as a way to find out about bands. When I had a Myspace page a few years ago, everyone’s page had a song on it. When I would visit their pages and I heard a song I liked, I would “google” the band and find more songs by them. He uses the band “The Arctic Monkeys” as an example. They became very successful without a record label because people heard their free tracks online and began to follow their music without buying their C.D at a store. Myspace became the best marketing tool for bands. (Tancer 186).
Bill Tancer is the General Manager of Global Research at Hitwise Competitive Intelligence Services. He also writes a column on Time.com. Tancer is clearly passionate about the work he does. I believe that Tancer’s book would benefit businesses and marketers who are concerned with the time that people would be searching for their product. This data could indeed change the way businesses advertise and the way they reach out to their consumers. Perhaps this was Tancer’s goal in writing this book.
I believe that Bill Tancer’s book would only be financially beneficial to a select few, however I believe that anyone that is interested in how the internet shapes our lives would enjoy reading it. The internet is in fact becoming a huge part of life and Tancer demonstrates this idea by giving numerous examples that prove human behavior is a reflection of what people search on the internet. Tancer is correct in stating that “We are what we click.”




Works Cited
Tancer, Bill. Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why It Matters. New York: Hyperion, 2008. Print.

[Martin]

The book ends with "...we are what we click." Such an appropriate ending seemed almost genius, yet extremely obvious to me. "Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters" by Bill Tancer is a book that explains the gathering and use of online data to explain what millions of people are doing online. Tancer is the General Manager for Global Research at Hitwise, and also has an online column at TIME, called "The Science of the Search." The author suggests that not only is the information he collects critical to marketing companies and retail companies, but that it can also be a very useful means of introspection for ones self and humans as a society.

I believe the book's main argument to be that the information Tancer collects can be a very useful tool for marketing and retail companies alike. Both can use this information to appeal to a wider audience and to reach a specific audience more directly. This is important to contemporary life because marketing and retail are two huge industries and literally everybody who lives in a modern country is effected directly by what major marketing companies choose to advertise. Marketing companies and retail companies alike can learn a lot from Tancer and his research company, Hitwise Competitive Intelligence Service. In one chapter, he explains how searches for prom dresses show a dramatic increase in January rather than the previously suspected April or May. Without information like this, many companies could possibly miss the best selling opportunity of the year. Tancer also elaborates on how what we see on television is connected to what we search for online. Companies can use this information to see what types of ads are most effective and can better learn how to reach a wider audience.

A second large point the book has is the fact that this information can be used for introspection. Tancer points out that what people do online tells us a lot about us both as a society and as unique individuals. One chapter tells about how searches for weight loss peak in the first week of January. Tancer concludes that this is so because people make a resolution to lose weight and start researching methods to reach this goal. These searches immediately begin to wane as we begin to face what Tancer calls "the false hope syndrome." He explains that people begin to lose hope because of ads online that make absurd weight loss claims. Another chapter explains what Tancer calls "celebrity worship syndrome" (Tancer 89). Since the advent of the internet, information on our favorite celebrities is only a click away, and some people take this to an extreme.

I find the book to be intriguing but not extremely useful to me personally. The book does a great job explaining what search term data is and how it is useful for businesses of all types. Although the information is useful for businesses, the book is clearly not intended for them; Tancer only goes into enough detail to attract the attention of anyone interested in his feild. Tancer thoroughly explains his main points in the book while adding interesting charts and graphs that easily attain the reader's attention. I believe that the book is longer than it needs to be and some of the information seems redundant and unnecessary.

[Katrina · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why it Matters, author Bill Tancer explores the internet beyond face value. Unbeknown to many internet users, like me, the things we “click” can be statistically monitored. The internet is home to endless amounts of data – not just in the literal term but also the hidden data behind patterns of online activity. Bill Tancer works for Hitwise Competitive Intelligence Service as the head of research. His primary job is to look at the trails of data that users leave behind and analyze the importance. In “Click,” Bill Tancer offers insight into the relevance of all this statistical data.
Sifting through the various points and examples in the book, two ideas particularly caught my attention. Bill Tancer's idea of cognitive dissonance interested me first. One reason the internet thrives is the privacy users have to explore things they might not be comfortable exploring in real life. “We don't want to provide insight into our daily lives that might make us look unsavory” (Tancer 17). Tancer's findings get their relevance from this very idea. Surveying the population will not result in honest answers. Looking at the raw, anonymous statistics of online activity can tell a lot more about society. Perhaps this is what separates the “consumers” and “producers” Tancer talks about. The ratio of the two is not 50:50. Most online users are consumers – meaning we spend more time browsing and taking in information rather than actively creating things on the internet. Producers look for ways to get themselves out there. Consumers like remaining in the shadows. Maybe we are not fully using the internet to its full potential. This idea left me thinking about the possibilities if more people voiced their opinion and turned into producers on the internet.
As a consumer, I do not see how Tancer's knowledge of internet patterns will play a role in my future success, but markets can gain a great advantage over competitors if they know exactly when and how to advertise. Every company wants to maximize profit and by looking at patterns from internet searches, Tancer can predict the future demands of the public. From finding the most popular month to buy prom dresses to predicting the next big music artist, Bill Tancer can do it. I imagine that Bill Tancer's intended audience consists of people in the marketing industry, and the secondary audience is curious individuals that wish to see what our online activity says about us.
This book is a semi-entertaining read that provides insight that would escape the daily internet user. Initially, the book comes across as disjointed because of the segmentation of each chapter, without a chapter that links them all together. The main focus of statistical data can be dull in taste to an average reader. However, taking a look at each of the examples individually can reveal interesting thoughts about our society in the age of online usage. The entertainment of the book comes from the afterthought of each example, not the actual content.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

In recent years there has been a deluge of books that deal with the amazing ways that Internet has been changing our lives and the important insights that we have acquired about ourselves from this powerful new platform. And yet, most of these books leave something to be desired.

[Ami · Rating 2 out of 5]

The two stars are for some genuinely interesting content, including a look at the disparity between what people genuinely fear and what they claim to fear and insightful commentary on how people will ask a search engine questions that might be better served to a close friend ("Why did he leave me?" for example).

However, for most of the book, I was considering mailing a highlighted copy to my favorite feminist blog for a snarky dressing down. The author seems stunned by things that are 100% commonplace facts to me:

1) Rich teens start shopping for prom dresses in January--Tancer is *stunned* that teen mags begin to advertise these dresses in January (as should be obvious to anyone who has picked up the Sept issue of Vogue--on stands in August and ad-vertorial-izing furs)

2) Dudes in general spend only one week looking for an engagement ring, which it TOTALLY surprising based on how women just love, love, love to shop for things like prom dresses! (I think Sinbad did a bit on this back in the earl 90s)

3) Marriage proposals increase after a cataclysmic event (ie, 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina)

I have just laid bare three ILLUMINATING sections of the book where Tancer uses internet stats to prove things that any decent newspaper style section should have already told you.

It makes me sad to think that this guru of data thinks this will be surprising information to readers of this book. The even sadder part is that it most likely will interest the 40-something, white, businessmen who do pick up the book.

I wouldn't call it sexist, just an example of how the hegemony can effectively resist learning about any other groups, even when their job is to know things and collect data.

[Bojan Tunguz · Rating 5 out of 5]

In recent years there has been a deluge of books that deal with the amazing ways that Internet has been changing our lives and the important insights that we have acquired about ourselves from this powerful new platform. And yet, most of these books leave something to be desired. They rarely go beyond what can be gleaned from the headlines by any above-average curious person. Oftentimes they focus too much on extraneous details of the life cycles of internet companies, and neglect to shed much light on what really goes behind the scenes that makes these companies so successful. This is primarily the function of the perception, real or imaginary, that the most valuable commodity that these companies have are in fact their unique insights and research, and the people in the know try to guard this information like the family jewels. With that in mind, Bill Tancer's book comes as a breath of fresh air. It is up to date with the latest thinking and research on online data mining and search strategies, and presents information that is not obvious or necessarily intuitive. He is a veteran of the field with years of experience with companies like HitWise that are at the very forefront of search technologies. He provides valuable and often hard to come by insights into how search companies try to measure and make sense of users' online behavior. Many of the examples in the book, like the searches for the contestants on the popular reality shows, are very contemporary and of interest to wider audience. Whether you are a geek with strong interest in all sorts of internet technologies, or just a curios ordinary web-surfer, this book will provide you with interesting and thought-provoking material.

[David Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book I read to research this post was Click: What We Do Online And Why It Matters by Bill Tancer which is a very good book which I bought at a car boot sale. The author of this book uses sites like Hitwise to measure online research by the general public. Obviously when there are big disasters like Hurricane Katrina that tends to become among the most searched for items. Interestingly when Anna Nicole Smith the playboy model whose life was like a soap opera died prematurely many people put in search terms like Is Anna Nicole Smith Dead and even for photos of her dead. A lot of people are obviously quite morbid. A lot of people when researching stuff go to wikipedia but also especially when buying products an increasing number are researching it on social media sites especially Facebook where people can click they like a product and many companies have Facebook product pages in addition to a website. In fact a basic product page is free & I think if you get 25 likes they give you that domain name. There is another social media site mentioned in the book which is geared towards new music which I'd never heard of but might check out called http://imeem.com. This book was published in 2009 when I think MySpace was more popular than currently and there is quite a bit about that. I did read somewhere that facebook is compatible with a lot of formats when it comes to uploading photos and video and that MySpace isn't which did cause a lot of people to migrate to Facebook. I enjoyed this book which is only about 280 pages but is probably more interesting than informative.

[Seemy · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me this was a fantastic and eye opening read...ive been in the internet marketing industry a for good few years now and not a novice to the idea of researching data and what people search for .. But this made me see differentiates of data from a new and more deeper prospective - sparking new ideas, knowledge and drag way if looking at things I deal with on a daily basis

Highly recommended for any fellow internet market and beyond whether you're a newbie or seasoned pro - you'll be sure to pick up something here making it a worth while read :)

To Our Continued Success!
Seemy
www.Waseem.tv/Blog

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[Ice · Rating 3 out of 5]

What time of year do teenage girls search for prom dresses online? How does the quick adoption of technology affect business success (and how is that related to corn farmers in Iowa)? How do time and money affect the gender of visitors to online dating sites? And how is the Internet itself affecting the way we experience the world? In Click, Bill Tancer takes us behind the scenes into the massive database of online intelligence to reveal the naked truth about how we use the Web, navigate to sites, and search for information--and what all of that says about who we are.

As online directories replace the yellow pages, search engines replace traditional research, and news sites replace newsprint, we are in an age in which we've come to rely tremendously on the Internet--leaving behind a trail of information about ourselves as a culture and the direction in which we are headed. With surprising and practical insight, Tancer demonstrates how the Internet is changing the way we absorb information and how understanding that change can be used to our advantage in business and in life. Click analyzes the new generation of consumerism in a way no other book has before, showing how we use the Internet, and how those trends provide a wealth of market research nearly as vast as the Internet itself. Understanding how we change is integral to our success. After all, we are what we click.

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating book. It's amazing how much data is collected by those watching the internet. Tancer uses a very relaxed conversational style to explain some of the more technical and broader ideas. It's not hard to get lost when he's explaining the parameters for a dataset that he's compiled to help back up an argument.



This is a great read if you are at all looking to position yourself or a business interest online. At a minimum, you'll look at areas of the country differently when it comes time to take action online. The back few sections are really the most valuable for this. In fact, I think I could have read the parts on early adopters and targeting markets and been just fine.



Some of the points he makes early on in the book seem a bit more "circumstantial". Such as stating "why" people were searching for certain things and not just mapping out the trends (especially in the area of politics/religion).



So I'd recommend this book to anyone in business or following online trends. It is an easy read for both.

[Kbord · Rating 3 out of 5]

Caution: first half of book makes references to adult content sites (without being explicit).

This book is all about how aggregate data from Internet searches can predict the future and trends, and can help marketers know when to start their advertising cycles, etc. Bill Tancer shows how people are using the Internet in unexpected ways and how people are using search engines as confidants.

It's pretty amazing stuff, and maybe a little scary to think about it. Everything you type into Google is stored as data for somene else to look at. Bet you didn't know that your deepest fears and secrets were out there like that. And I can't help but think, if there's a way to get the aggregate data, there would be a way to figure out specifically which individuals were typing each instance of data.

I also got a bit of a feeling that the author wouldn't mind using this book as an out-and-out advetisement for his website that tracks all of this data, which he keeps mentioning in the text and graphs.

In the end, I figure we're all just a bunch of self-fulling prophecies.

[Melinda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a quick and interesting read. The point of the book is to demonstrate the power of Web analytics, specifically search engine data, to forecast consumer trends. While intriguing, some of the predictions the author makes are only loosely supported. Through the use of search engine data, he has the "what" (an increase in certain search terms), but often makes assumptions on the "why" that is driving the popularity of these search terms. Indeed, the author even puts forth a few examples of when his past published assumptions were way off base. While his research is by no means perfect, it is a good example of the ongoing growth, development, and increased understanding of a relatively new Web research tool. If you are considering reading this book, I would do so soon. Published in 2008 with data from 2007...it is already becoming a bit outdated in the rapidly evolving industries of Web research and marketing.

[Kathleen Garber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Click is a book for one of these kind of people:

Those in Research.
Those in any business really
Those who like facts and stats
I'm in the third position. I find it very interesting what people search for online.

The book reveals some very interesting patterns that no one could ever have guessed. In fact when shown the data, even the author had to figure out why it would be like it was. for example, searches for Prom Dresses is at it's height during JANUARY! With proms in June, why would people be searching for dresses so early? You'll have to read the book to find out for sure.

The book is full of graphs and stats, something that just totally interests me.

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[Deb · Rating 4 out of 5]

*We are what we click*

A fascinating book investigating the confluence of the online and the offline worlds, Click explores how an analysis of Internet behavior provides a new understanding of human behavior and preferences. In ways that traditional surveys cannot capture, Internet search-term data reveals more about who we really are, how we really chose to live, and how (and precisely when) we are most likely to change. In addition to reflecting our thoughts, fears, preferences, curiosities, obsessions, confessions, hopes, and dreams, the ever-growing database of online intelligence provides new insights into consumer trends, which traditional business models often fail to predict. Providing a convincing argument for the premise that "we are what we click," Click shows how our online behaviors both reflect and effect who we are offline.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bill Tancer is "the king of ...online research". He takes the data he collects and uses it, among other things, to help the business world interpret the data to more effectively market their products. In the process, he is realizing and sharing the huge differences the internet has made in our daily lives, in the commercial world and in every aspect of government. Decision-makers in all of these areas go about making these decisions based on a whole new way of finding, knowing and interpreting data that was never available to us before. With humor and insight, Tancer explains how we are using the data we find online and why it even matters.

This was a very readable book and very eye-opening to me.

[Mercy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book about our online search habits. Results taken in the aggregate, it tells us more about how our minds work than traditional surveys.

In a time when online anonymity is becoming more transparent, I found it a little frightening that so much can be found out about our thought processes. While the author didn't make a huge point of the fact that this information is collected for marketing purposes (for the most part) so we can become Good Customers, it's easy to imagine ads that are harder and harder to resist pinpointing us at every site we visit.

I loved Tancer's easy and humorous writing style. This is a good read for those who want to know what's going on behind the scenes of our surfing habits.

[Nytetyger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why do search engines show a HUGE spike in searches for prom dresses in January? What is the day of the week that most people search the internet for porn? Just who reads WHICH gossip sites? The author looks at the way America uses search engines, as his company mines the raw data from a few of them, using the statistics for things like better aimed advertising on the web, better positioning of a web site, etc. While it is an interesting subject, it really would have made a better long article in, say ‘Wired’ than this book which tries too hard to be amusing and a light read it really cannot be when written by a trained professional who loves how the numbers grow into elegant graphable trends. It was interesting, but dragged.

[Nura Yusof · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent read and yet disturbing on two aspects.

Increasingly, we are becoming too comfortable ""bearing our souls"" online whether through search engines, blogs etc. Whilst on our part, these activities are seemingly anonymous, we have on the other hand, marketers ever willing to exploit this new knowledge to peddle their wares. To take the analogy Tancer used in his book, it's like being in a confessional, and aside from the penance issued by the priest, he's also selling this bunch of other products that might help.

The other aspect is that the growing dependency on technology to answer our deepest questions, may cause us to isolate ourselves from others. We could get to comfortable getting our answers online as opposed to communication and lively discourse with others.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like the author, I have to admit that I love data. And this book describes a data-miner’s dream. The author has information about the searches made and websites visited by 10 million users (!) and has demographic information for about a quarter of them. Throughout the book, the author does a great job explaining the data processing behind his conclusions. He writes in an engaging tone and is clearly excited about his work. But what really kept me interested in this book were the cool connections and conclusions he could draw from people’s online behavior.

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