What time of year do teenage girls search for prom dresses online? How does the quick adoption of technology affect business success (and how is that related to corn farmers in Iowa)? How do time and money affect the gender of visitors to online dating sites? And how is the Internet itself affecting the way we experience the world? In Click, Bill Tancer takes us behind the scenes into the massive database of online intelligence to reveal the naked truth about how we use the Web, navigate to sites, and search for information--and what all of that says about who we are.

As online directories replace the yellow pages, search engines replace traditional research, and news sites replace newsprint, we are in an age in which we've come to rely tremendously on the Internet--leaving behind a trail of information about ourselves as a culture and the direction in which we are headed. With surprising and practical insight, Tancer demonstrates how the Internet is changing the way we absorb information and how understanding that change can be used to our advantage in business and in life. Click analyzes the new generation of consumerism in a way no other book has before, showing how we use the Internet, and how those trends provide a wealth of market research nearly as vast as the Internet itself. Understanding how we change is integral to our success. After all, we are what we click.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Relavant and Interesting
Comment: This is a nice read, it's not super thick and I enjoyed how it caused me to think in a more anylitical manner about my own websites, as well as my own click/search behavior. It's important to understand your customers if you have an online business and any books like this one just help you gain more focus, learn more tricks and think more critically. I also enjoy the blog posts on the detail page for this book on Amazon.

There was recently an article on [...] talking about how google can track the FLU and how it spread by what people are searching for. This is another great example of the power of watching and stduying the search anylitics from your website, as well as the web in general. Great book, not super thick but sometimes it's hard to find time to finish the thicker books so it's nice to be able to read something that is to the point, and still gets you thinking.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Light reading for those unfamiliar with popularity of the WWW
Comment: This book makes for light reading and I believe probably more useful for those who are not as familiar with the widespread popularity and power of the world wide web. In some way, it is possible to be used as the basis for understanding the world wide web, but not specific enough to offer industry expertise in any one application of the web. I imagine a student writing an essay on the world wide web could find this useful, but perhaps if this book were written five years ago, it could be more interesting.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: great stuff, but not for everyone
Comment: This is a great book. First, however, a few words about what it is - and what it's not. It's not a primer on how to get more customers to the website for your your small business. It's not a technical tome on search optimization. It's not the be-all and end-all on the psychology of online behavior.

What it is is something in the same vein as Blink, or Nudge, or Freakonomics. In other words, the author looks at some data and, in a lighthearted way, makes some interesting connections that tell us some very interesting things about ourselves.

In this case, the data is what criteria people enter into search engines. The idea is that this information helps reveal a true picture of ourselves. Ask yourself, what would you trust more when it comes to surveying people's attitudes on pornography - a telephone (or in-person!) survey or detailed data about what people type into a search engine late at night in the privacy of their own homes?

The fun thing about this book is how much data the author has at his fingertips and how much fun he has in seeing odd patterns develop over time or in finding odd correlations - and then trying to figure out why.

Take, for example, prom dresses ... There is an expected bump in searches right before prom time - but also one at the beginning of the year. Why? Well, it turns out that there are basically two different customer groups. One is the girl - social, fashion forward, probably a little more traditional, richer - who is really into it. She reads the fashion magazines that feature prom wear (and that come out in January) and then starts preparing. The other is the girl who knows she's expected to go, and she's got to wear something, and doesn't want (or have) a lot of money to spend on it ("cheap prom dresses" soar during the later time period). The author even gets into what he calls "search arbitrage" - i.e., predicting things (like who's going to win American Idol or predicting the next hot band) based on search results.

Now, this sort of thing is not for everyone. The author meanders around quite widely, and the average reader may be asking themselves "so what?" quite a but. But for those of who have a bent toward data, it's a very fun ride.

The only beefs I had were that the author relegated his methodology to a few short paragraphs in the introduction. It's important, interesting in its own regard, and definitely could have had some more emphasis.

Also, the author's writing style is good, but he's no Malcom Gladwell or Steven Levitt. In particular, he has an annoying habit of starting each chapter with a hard-to-follow, not totally relevant personal story before he gets to the data. I strongly disagree with the reviewers who thought the writing was really bad or too self-serving. The personal stories simply make it more readable. And he's really quite humble. If you'd like an example of what NOT to do in this regard, try Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Mysterious Online World
Comment: As someone who makes his living nearly 100% on the Internet today, I must say Bill Tancer's CLICK is quite an amazing read. Our assumptions about online behavior may sometimes be dead wrong as Tancer so brilliantly lays out in this book and knowing what he shares about can result in success for you and your business. Some of this stuff I was already aware of just from my nearly 15 years of being on the World Wide Web, but a lot of what he discusses is new now that the Internet has gone widespread mainstream. He even goes so far as to say that perhaps our model for polling who will become the next president is distorted now because of the lack of attention on Internet behavior. If you just surf around for fun or rely on the online world for your living like me, then you owe it to yourself to read CLICK.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: This book ruined my evening. Read why:
Comment: I expected this book to be dry, boring and full of data/stats. Surprisingly, this book was an easy read. I actually read the book in one sitting! The drawbacks were the author's constant patting-himself-on-the-back. (And we thought Steve Jobs had an ego!) If you can get over the hyper-inflated self-analysis of Bill Tancer, the book is an interesting read, but one you might find more helpful to pick up at the library. Now that I've read it I'll either garage sale it or Goodwill it. If you think you'll pick up the book to get an idea about detailed insights into click behavior...think again. You'll need to pay the hefty $1000+ price tag from Hitwise to get the real scoop. This book is really more of a snapshot into Tancer's daily routine (e.g. the droning illustration of the prom dress saga), and a subliminal sales pitch of why Hitwise should be part of any online marketing strategy. One interesting item to note from the entire book was that watching search behavior often tells a story that can be critical to a marketing campaign. It isn't so much the words which are used, rather the timing when the words go into effect. (Again, the droning prom dress story is a perfect example of how marketers are missing the sales window by assuming that sales for prom attire is in March-May rather than in Jan.) Interesting read, but not one that I feel the yearning urge to keep in my personal library!

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