QUESTION: DO PEOPLE USE SEARCH ENGINES MORE WHEN WORKING REMOTELY FROM HOME COMPARED TO WORKING IN A PHYSICAL WORKPLACE OR INSTITUTION?

It may be possible that remote working from home becomes ‘the norm’ in some areas, with travel to the workplace ‘the exception’ (flipping the pre-lockdown practice for many). A resulting change in behaviour where people do indeed search their company resources and external literature ‘more’ could have implications on a number of levels.

There is significant evidence that the COVID-19 lockdowns have led to a surge in Internet Search usage which is continuing to rise. I also wanted to investigate if search behaviour in the workplace / institution has been affected so far. This is still very much a work in progress, but some evidence is emerging (see above source:Similarweb) for a similar effect in scholarly literature search supporting both the academic and commercial sector. There are a variety of caveats, for example some literature is being made free to all, that may cause increases in usage in itself. So more in-depth analysis is required but it is clear search behaviour patterns across the board are showing significant changes.