I had an interesting question asked of me this week. A young woman (she was only in her 50s) wrote to ask me about e-books, and in our conversation-- via email-- revealed she had become interested in my book after trying to discover how women search online.

This young woman recently entered the workforce after being in business for herself for several decades. We are keeping in touch and I hope to learn her story, especially why she returned to "employee status" at this time in her life, but in the meantime, I was intrigued by her question: How do women search?

I had no clear cut answer for her, other than to say that women research and hop around online a bit-- we seldom click one link and stay at that site long enough to buy right away. We shop around online, the same way we shop around offline. And, men shop online the same way they shop offline, with a focus on getting what they came for, and getting out.

In a report at Media Post, on Tuesday, April 20, 2004, this headline gave a hint to female searching patterns: "Females More Likely to Fly Search Coop, Finds Part Two of iProspect Survey." The article calls this "defying their reputation for nesting." Lauren Wiener, managing director at Meredith Interactive (publisher of American Baby and Ladies' Home Journal's LHJ.com) commented, "[Women] do use search engines to find specific information, but will quickly abandon them if the first page results are too generic." She asserts that women are busy, and we like to shop at sites we trust. To promote magazine subscriptions, Lauren said she buys keywords like "chicken soup."

My new young friend wanted specifics, however. She wanted to know what women type in the search box? She wanted to know how women qualify or quantify their search? If I'm shopping for a car, is my search term "new cars" or "used cars" or "2004 Honda" with a local dealership included?

Now, I am on a mission. To discover how women search. I ask my women readers to help me out: how do you search? Are you specific in your terms or do you start with a broad phrase and narrow it down according to your search results? It's not enough to know that women "fly the coop" when they don't get what they want in the first 3 pages. That's so 20th century! In our bits and bytes millennium, I need to know how many words you usually use in a search? How many links do you check out? Do paid ads on search pages influence you?

Looks like I have my work cut out for me. Learning how women search--Good stuff for the next book.

What's not to like about that?