Get Smart with Search

By Aaron Goldman, VP, Marketing & Strategic Partnerships

In her weekly recap of search news on Friday, Betsy included a link to a piece on Search Engine Land covering a study reported by CNN about how search can make you smarter.

Apparently scientists have linked the act of searching to improvements in “brain speed, control and working memory and other cognitive abilities.”

According to Dr. Gary Small, a professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, when people search there is “much greater activation particularly in the front part [of the brain], which controls decision-making and complex reasoning.”

However, he added the caveat that this outcome was “only for the people who had previous experience with the Internet." (I guess that rules out John McCain.)

So the next time anyone asks you why you chose search marketing as a career, don't give the typical response of how you like to solve complex business problems by leveraging millions of real-time data points. Or how you appreciate the job security of being in one of the few indsutries poised to come out relatively unscathed in the recession.

Just tell them you're doing your part to make the world smarter.