Due to limitations of the search API we use, we can only index a fixed amount of (new) searches each month. If your search has come up empty (e.g. not indexed), please try again later.

The results are provided 'as is' and should not be considered reliable, nor do they reflect the opinion of whatdoestheinternetthink.net, its creators, Twitter, Bing (Microsoft) or Google.

The results are merely a reflection of a majority in search term results reported by said search-engine.

Note that the site is an ongoing experiment. Results can indeed vary per month, which is completely normal due to opinions actually changing, and fluctuations in search engine indexing.

Searches provided by Bing (up to 12-2016) and Google

Since launching in 2009, this has sparked some discussion as to how it all works. The analysis system is fairly basic: the searchterm is used in (English) sentences, which are arranged into three categories of connotation: negative, positive and indifferent. These sentences are then sent off to the search engine(s)*, counting the number of results returned for each category, which are subsequently converted into percentages. The sentences are double quoted, to make sure the search-engine searches for occurrences of the whole sentence.

These results represent a very global impression of connotations (positive, negative or indifferent) for said search term, so they should not be taken too seriously.

However, the more results (hits) are returned for a search, the more accurate the percentages can become. Some obvious searches (such as beer, bad breath, parking tickets, sex, etc) are probably not far off – or perhaps even in-sync – with the result you had in mind.

Everything boils down to connotation. To read more on this, in relation to the website, we highly recommend reading this very nice article on whatdoestheinternetthink by Velar Trill, which is spot on and explains why some results seem to be 'wrong'.

* From 2009-2012 we used the three big ones: Yahoo, Google and Bing. Between 2012-2014 Bing was the only one left, since april 2014 Google (using Custom Search) was reintroduced to the system and Bing was eventually removed december 2016, as the API is no longer free.

You can now use whatdoestheinternetthink directly from twitter! Just tweet '@wdtit about' followed by a subject and you will receive a reply with the answer in under a minute. This service is in beta. For now, only regular search is available, but other search features will soon follow.

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