Cultural Biases on the Web

In conjunction with France Telecom an experiment was undertaken to look for differences in web browsing strategies between French and Americans. Subjects first took three small tests and a quick questionnaire to assess their "web proficiency". They were then given a Yahoo-Like search page from which to begin all their web searches for the next twenty searches. The results were analyzed for differences in style. Of particular interest were differences in the generality of terms selected. There were three conditions: high level categories without sub categories to explain them, sub-cateogries grouped appropriately but without their superordinate category, and the standard Yahoo form of superordinate and subordiate categories. Initial results showed a significant difference in French and Americans: Americans had a stronger preference for schemes that had sub-categories, the French were more tolerant of schemes consisting of superordinate categories alone.