A study conducted by Alexa Research has found that a large number of people who are familiar with the use of the internet are not good at using search engines.

Alexa Research who are a web intelligence and traffic measurement service, found that millions of internet users enter the name of the site into the search box of their homepage or other search engine rather than entering a uniform resource locator (URL).

They also found that the most commonly used word entered in the search category was Sex with around 1 in every 300 words, which made this more popular than games, music, travel, jokes, cars, jobs, weather and health.

They were surprised by the numbers of people that accessed websites by using site names as search terms, rather than simply typing the address in the field of their browser. This also showed that there is a misunderstanding of how to navigate the web effectively and that people think they need to go via their homepage to get to the site that they require.

Popular celebrities included were Britney Spears, Pamela Anderson, Backstreet Boys, Jennifer Lopez and Eminem.

Pokemon was the most popular toy or game and Playboy the most popular media.