The life of a Google Answers question
What happens to a question after it is posted to Google Answers? Here’s a rough idea.
Most of this is wild extrapoliation from my own experience; the rest is based on quick approximate counts from publicly-accessible pages at Google Answers.
- One person posts the question
- A few percent of questions are removed by the Google Answers Editors because they contravene the Terms of Service for Google Answers - for example, because they include identifiable personal information
- A few percent of questions are accidentally posted more than once. Researchers usually post a comment to alert other researchers to the duplicate question
- Over 600 researchers have been approved by Google to answer the question
- Around a hundred researchers will read the question title, of whom…
- Perhaps twenty researchers will read the question body.
- Half a dozen researchers will lock the question to conduct some preliminary research, of whom
- Two will research the question in depth, of whom
- One will ask for clarification, after which
- There will be an exchange of clarification details of between zero and a dozen or more messages (averaging around three).
- Finally, for about 50% of clarified questions,
- One researcher will post an answer.
This will result in:
- Between zero and a dozen or more request for clarification and clarifications, averaging two or three, plus
- Between zero and over a thousand comments, mostly from non-researchers.
The question will then:
- Be rated in about one-third of cases: usually five stars, sometimes four stars, occasionally three stars, rarely two stars and occasionally one star
- Be tipped in about 25% of cases, usually from $1 to $10 but can be up to $100
- Be rejected by the customer, or withdrawn by the researcher, in under 5% of cases
Of the unanswered questions:
- A small number will be closed early, but
- The vast majority will expire normally.
Of the answered questions:
- Under five percent will be referenced and linked to from a future question
Does anyone have any other metrics of interest to suggest?