From vnunet.com,

A fairly interesting poll concerning gender difference in search pattern. Half of men surveyed would turn to search engines when they seek advice, while the proportion of women is not revealed but can be estimated no more than one third because "one in three rating family as their number one choice for help and information". IMHO, men's preference on search engines may be in part due to the social expectation on male. That is, men are supposed to know more and if they can't, they should get the answer from reliable sources independently. In this sense, search engines are the best gifts granted to men.

The social expectation on female in this aspect is obviously much more loose. Women are supposed to be dependent and thus it's not a shame for them to ask for help from others. Women are more comfortable with interpersonal communication than with the cold screen.

The poll attributes searching one's own name online to search vanity. I can't totally agree with this because people might search for their own name on the Internet out of curiosity. I don't expect people would find out how popular by searching themselves because most information might be about someone else who shares the same name with the searcher. However, it's still surprising to learn that only one out of five women have ever done that before.

I think men's searching habit might cause their impatience with the search results. On average two words as keyword would bring up a lot of unrelated or even distracting information. In this case, women's carefulness does pay back.

I want to know more about the poll. What are the sample size? Composition of the investigated? Did those MSN guys t-test or ANOVA???