> Knowing what the most common questions are doesn't help you find the corresponding answers.
Not directly, but it does mean that, say, the second 50% of people that ask the same question will get a better answer than the first 50%.
Google has been able to build fairly accurate instant results based on which sites users were clicking on before. I'd say that a majority of simple general knowledge queries are solved by quoting the first 3 sentences of the wikipedia page that match the search query.
But let's say that there is no easy match to show a quick result for. But after 1000 queries, 98% of users clicked on one particular site on the first page and never went back to the search results. Google then A/B trials how many clicks result from showing that website at the top of the results page in an instant result window. If clicks drastically drop, that's a sign most users are satisfied with that result. They were only able to do that, because of the 1000s of times people typed that query and interacted with the site.
So I'd say that yes, having common questions asked over and over again does help you find the answer that users are looking for.
The funny / scary part here, is that this may not be the correct answer. But it's the answer that satisfies the most users, and is therefore the one that will keep the most people coming back to the Google search engine.
Not directly, but it does mean that, say, the second 50% of people that ask the same question will get a better answer than the first 50%.
Google has been able to build fairly accurate instant results based on which sites users were clicking on before. I'd say that a majority of simple general knowledge queries are solved by quoting the first 3 sentences of the wikipedia page that match the search query.
But let's say that there is no easy match to show a quick result for. But after 1000 queries, 98% of users clicked on one particular site on the first page and never went back to the search results. Google then A/B trials how many clicks result from showing that website at the top of the results page in an instant result window. If clicks drastically drop, that's a sign most users are satisfied with that result. They were only able to do that, because of the 1000s of times people typed that query and interacted with the site.
So I'd say that yes, having common questions asked over and over again does help you find the answer that users are looking for.
The funny / scary part here, is that this may not be the correct answer. But it's the answer that satisfies the most users, and is therefore the one that will keep the most people coming back to the Google search engine.