Should a Search Engine Sell Business Intelligence Gathered from Searchers’ Queries?
Ask.com’s patent application published this week, Methods and systems for generating query and result-based relevance indexes, notes that information from users’ queries and interactions with search results is limited in use to provide more relevant results to searchers. That kind of information includes time of searches, the geographic sources of queries, and demographic variables about searchers. This information might be useful to businesses willing to pay for it. Should a search engine offer that kind of information to businesses? Some examples from the patent application: On a query for Nascar: Most stock car races are located in Southeastern region. However, in a case where a plot of the geographic profile for users asking about “NASCAR” indicates that the number of “NASCAR” queries originating from the Northwestern region was unexpectedly high, external entities, such as NASCAR, may use this business information on the public interest to by moving some races to tracks in the int
