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Study Reveals The Most Googled 'Should I' Questions In Each State (bgr.com) 102

An anonymous reader quotes BGR: One of the more interesting 2018 retrospectives we've seen focuses on which Google searches were the most popular across each state. Specifically, AT&T tapped into data from Google Trends and came up with a rather amusing look at the most popular "should I..." questions on a state by state basis.

"Should I vote" was the most-popular question in seven states, which isn't surprising, given the exciting races in many areas. Indiana and Michigan, on the other hand, are more concerned with the other four-letter v-word: vape.

Other interesting results:
  • The most popular question in Washington was "Should I delete Facebook?"
  • The most popular question in California was "Should I move out?"
  • The most popular question in Texas was "Should I apologize?"
  • The most popular question in both Nevada and New Hampshire was "Should I buy bitcoin?"

Although the article warns that "If you're asking Google what you should or shouldn't do, you probably already know the answer."


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Study Reveals The Most Googled 'Should I' Questions In Each State

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  • Should I (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 16, 2018 @03:35AM (#57811530)
    Should I post first?
    • by Anonymous Coward

      No, you should not.

    • In Colorado it's "should I light up another one or save it for tomorrow?"

      In Arkansas it's "should I worry whether Cousin Mom and Uncle Dad are my real parents?"

      In Alaska it's "should I buy my husband a new set of seal clubs for Christmas?"

      In Oklahoma it's "should I have deep-fried bread, deep-fried cornflakes, or deep-fried omelets for breakfast?"

      • Re:Should I (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ls671 ( 1122017 ) on Sunday December 16, 2018 @04:56AM (#57811636) Homepage

        What seems worrying to me is that it looks like people are actually asking Google for advice in how to conduct their personal life like if they were talking to a psychologist or something.

        • Re:Should I (Score:5, Funny)

          by JustOK ( 667959 ) on Sunday December 16, 2018 @05:29AM (#57811700) Journal
          And how does that make you feel about they were talking to a psychologist or something?
        • Might as well treat it like Eliza, since it no longer works using operators to construct a search as a code fragment.

          In the old days searching was about selecting the combination of keywords that would be most likely to appear in the results. Even that doesn't work well anymore.

          Instead, ask the most similar stupid question that is common, and you'll get better results. Sad but true. And then the results you have to do the opposite, look for the page that answered a better question.

        • Obviously by putting a phrase like "should i vote" in the search box they are searching for pages that contain the phrase "should i vote," i.e. forum topics in which people ask that question and presumably others answer.

          There's nothing weird or worrysome about it. People are not trying to have conversations with search engines. They are using search engines to search for pages containing a specific phrase, as intended.

      • n Oklahoma it's "should I have deep-fried bread, deep-fried cornflakes, or deep-fried omelets for breakfast?"

        That sounds more like Texas. In Oklahoma, if it's not Chicken-Fried Steak, then it either came from a fastfood joint or the supermarket freezer section... and their number one search question should be "is it okay to treat my dog's mange with used engine oil?" however it's generally assumed that that is a "yes" and they just go ahead and use used engine oil.

        No, really.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Should I RTFA or make wild assumptions and post inflammatory uninformed counter replies?
  • From TFA: In Kansas and Tennessee, for example, the most popular “Should I” query was “Should I diet?” This of course isn’t terribly shocking given that both states know a thing or two about barbecue.

    Since when is Kansas known for their barbecue? I both love barbecue and have lived in Kansas, and while there were a few barbecue restaurants in Wichita, I don't recall anyone ever talking about barbecue like Tennessee or Texas. People in Kansas sure love to eat, a lot, but barbe
    • People in Kansas sure love to eat, a lot, but barbecue restaurants are far less common than burgers, fried chicken, and Mexican, in fact aside from chain fast food, Mexican is definitely extremely common. Plus the barbecue there really, really, really sucks and isn't worthy of note.

      I'm surprised they allow Mexican.

  • A Chinchilla eats the universe

    When Voldemort uses my shampoo

    Those search autofinish would be a little amusing at least.

    Hard to imagine that this article got published anywhere. I'm only here because I can't look away from a train wreck.

    • When Voldemort uses my shampoo

      He was bald. I hate it more when he uses the dining room to feed other guests to his snake.

      • When Voldemort uses my shampoo

        He was bald. [...]

        That's what's so annoying. HE DOESN'T EVEN NEED IT!!!

    • It knows who you are, and what content you consume. That's why it says that stuff to you.

      Should I shampoo? No. You should shave the whole monstrosity off. It smells like chinchilla.

      And stop trying to eat the Universe. You don't have to eat just because you're rewatching a movie you already saw two thousand times.

      And you know why you're really here.

  • The method used was to find the most distinct query for each state from a list of the top 100 queries for all states. This nearly guarantees that the result will NOT be the most popular query for any state,

  • The most popular question in Texas was "Should I apologize?"

    ... yes.

  • This is a really interesting list. I'm particularly amused by the groupings of the north-west-ish indicating that they feel their vote doesn't matter, the midwest which seems to correlate with the food desert that those states are, and the northeast which seems to be broadly covered by the term "first world problems". Also, being a Washington native and Oregon resident I am supremely proud of both my home state and adopted home for their outlooks on life.

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