Submitting queries to search engines has become a major way for consumers to search for information and products. The massive amount of search query data available today has the potential to provide valuable information on consumer preferences. In order to unlock this potential, it is necessary to understand how consumers translate their preferences into search queries. Strategic consumers should attempt to maximize the information content of the search results, conditional on a set of beliefs on how the search engine operates. We show using field data that optimal queries may exclude some of the terms that are more relevant to the consumer, potentially at the expense of less relevant terms. In two incentive-aligned lab experiments, we find that consumers have some ability to strategically omit relevant terms when forming their search queries, but that their search queries tend to be suboptimal. In a third incentive-aligned experiment, we find that consumers’ beliefs on how the search engine operates tend to be inaccurate. Overall, our results are consistent with consumers being strategic when formulating their queries, but acting on incorrect beliefs on how the search engine operates.

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战略消费者的搜索查询构成

向搜索引擎提交查询已成为消费者搜索信息和产品的主要方式。当今可用的大量搜索查询数据有可能提供有关消费者偏好的有价值的信息。为了释放这种潜力，有必要了解消费者如何将其偏好转换为搜索查询。战略性消费者应根据对搜索引擎如何运行的一系列信念，尝试使搜索结果的信息内容最大化。我们使用现场数据显示，最佳查询可能会排除一些与消费者相关性更高的字词，这可能会以字词不相关的代价为代价。在两项针对激励措施的实验室实验中，我们发现，消费者在形成搜索查询时具有一定的策略性地忽略相关字词的能力，但是他们的搜索查询往往不是最理想的。在第三个激励相关的实验中，我们发现消费者对搜索引擎的运行方式的看法往往不准确。总体而言，我们的结果与消费者在制定查询时具有战略性，但对搜索引擎的运作方式有错误的看法一致。