Monday, April 30, 2007

The He/ She Ratio

A site’s he/ she ratio is measured by counting the number of pages on the domain containing the word “he”, then searching for the number containing “she”, and then looking at the two numbers in comparison. For instance, the Google search site:cnn.com he returns about 1,160,000 results, and site:cnn.com she returns 335,000 results, meaning “he” makes up around 78% of the CNN pages containing either “he” or “she.”

What does this ratio tell us? If you think it reveals that e.g. a site with a higher “he” count is primarily consisting of or appealing to a male audience, that’s not true; for instance, both BlogHer.org as well as AskMen.com show a higher count for “she.” Whatever correlations you might discover, they’re likely not as linear. Below are a couple of examples from different sites:

The He/ She Ratio by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (40)

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