In my posting AOL Data Analysis - IV. Where do People Search For? I looked at the most used search queries in the AOL data. The result was that the most searched query was empty: over 1 million empty searches were in the data. I was curious for the fact whether people would click a result or make a real search. According to the data.. over 30% of the empty searches resulted in a click. ! But the problem is, that it seems impossible to do an empty search and click a result, since an empty search doesn't return any results!! Any explanation for this?
Is it possible that the empty searches are simply unrecorded searches that occur when the user clicks on a sponsored result rather than an organic one? There are normally more sponsored results on an AOL search page than organic ones. - Michael