How many characters in search engine queries?

Introduction

This page presents some statistics on queries typed in search engine like Google. In order to realize these statistics, datasets from different search engines have been collected and processed.

The dataset is made up of two main sources:

data exported from the Google Search Console
queries from websites internal search engines

The language of the data is mainly English and French

Here is an extract of the dataset which is composed of a little more than 26000 queries:

"how to use itertools.product in python?", 1
"how to write inverse of function in latex", 1
"how were you programmed", 1
"how work out angles", 1
"how's your day", 1
"how's your day?", 2
"hp z420", 3
"hpgr compressive force", 2
"hrllo", 1
"hrv pays", 338
"html", 4
"html checkbox", 1
"html description longueur", 1

Query length

After processing the dataset with a Python mill, the following chart presents the length of the queries:

Two main peaks

The first observation is that there are two peaks, around 20 and 45 characters. When analysing the queries, we clearly see there is two types of queries :

keywords (the peak around 20 characters)
questions (the peak around 45 characters)

Here is an example of 20 character long queries:

prédécesseur féminin
puerto rico habitant
python list -1 index
python list index -1
python requests ajax
quartier des affaire
quaternion conjugate
quaternion normalize
quaternions rotation
que veut dire mougou
quel âge a Madonna ?
quelque soit symbole
quill.root.innerhtml
racine cubique latex
racine n-iÃ¨me latex

Here is an example of 45 character long queries:

convert miles per hour to kilometers per hour
convertir tour par seconde en tour par minute
différence disjoncteur entre MSN et HPI ou SI
ensemble forme par une ville et ses banlieues
exprimer le pourcentage sur le clavier azerty
faut il mettre une majuscule au nom de langue
formule de politesse courrier à un chirurgien
formule tour par minute en radian par seconde
habitants de la suisse on les appelle comment
how to convert linear velocity (m/s) to rad/s
il existe combien de continent dans ce monde?
javascript check if string is only whitespace
javascript check if string is whitespace only
javascript remove carriage return from string
javascript remove return carriage from string
je ne manqueraipas de vous tenir informé dès 
latex ecrire une formule sur plusieurs lignes

Average length

The average lenght is 32.5 characters.

More interresting is that the length of queries is mostly less than 50 characters. By plotting the cumulative length, we can even say that 90% of the queries are less than 50 characters long:

Short queries

By plotting the length on a logarithmis scale, we can see the extrems:

The shortest queries are composed of a single character:

,
?
g
f
C
W
y
a
💚
H
ي
s
X
~

The four characters long queries are also interesting. There are composed of single word like:

U=RI
Mint
Logo
html
prêt
Audi
2021
sony
Holà

Most of sex-related words are short:

fuck
porn
sexe

And the last interesting part is the calculation:

45/6
52/6
66/6
41/6
76/2
43*7
65*8
78*2
86*8
35+7
13*7
14*7
33+9
72/2
26*8
18*8
6*24
13*6
2*38

Long queries

Now, let's have a look at the long queries. Let's start by the longest query (274 characters):

6) The rotating blade of a blender turns with constant angular acceleration 20 revolutions per minutesecond. (a) How much time does it take to reach an angular velocity of 344 RPM starting from rest? (b)Through how many revolutions does the blade turn in this time interval?

That's clearly someone who copied his homework in the search engine !

If we look at the other long queries, here are some interresing ones. Most are text copied in the search engine:

Hello, Excuse me for this way of contacting you, I just saw your profile and I thought that you are the person I need. In short, my name is Madame Pierrette Vachon, of Dutch origin and I live in France. I suffer from a serious illness which condemns me to

There is a clever kitchen gadget for drying lettuce leaves after you wash them. It consists of a cylindrical container mounted so that it can be rotated about its axis by turning a hand crank. The outer wall of the cylinder is perforated with small holes.

Question 2(a & b) is based on this scenario. You are the sales manager for Black and Decker, in charge for industrial screwdriver market. Salim is a recruit working under your supervision. Question 2 a. Guide him on getting more prospects for him

Some code:

static void f1 ( int t , int size ){for ( int i = 0; i < size ; i += 2 ){int p = t + i ; p = i 10;}}

Like the very short one, some users requests for calculations:

0.1*(log(1.05)+log(1.15)+log(1.25)+log(1.35)+log(1.45)+log(1.55)+log(1.65)+log(1.75)+log(1.85)+log(1.95))

1+0.00356+0.00366+0.00558+0.08811+0.0039+0.08811+0.0036+0.08811+0.0043+0.08811+0.00377+0.08811+0.0037+0.08811