Is Web Surfing A Dying Sport?

Studies

from the it's-all-business-these-days dept

In the early days of the web, you could spend hours just jumping from website to website following where the links would take you. These days, however, people are more inclined to just go directly to the sites they know about, do whatever it is they want to do, and then move on. The internet, more than a time waster, has become almost (gasp!) practical. While people still use search engines to find stuff, it used to be that the search engines would send them on more random chases through the internet. Now, search engines are used to get directly where surfers want to go. Of course, I imagine a lot of this is a result of better search engines that don’t send people off onto random pages. Also, people are becoming more savvy about searches, and knowing when a search takes them to the right or wrong websites. Of course, I still think there’s a culture of random surfing going on. For me, though, it’s all blog-oriented. I do most of my random surfing by following links from blog to blog – using the bloggers as a sort of guide, instead of just hoping to come across something new and interesting completely on my own.