I read an academic paper a while back where the authors claimed that Chinese search engines use target="blank" so all search result links open in new windows, and that's the normal state of affairs. Does anyone know if that's true?
Users in the Chinese market nearly always branch [what the authors call opening links in new windows], a behavior forced by their search engines' default settings. Some people speculate [footnote for http://www.quora.com/China/Why-do-most-hyperlinks- on-Chinese-websites-open-a-new-window-tab] that this default started because Internet access is slower in China and so branching enables Web pages to load in the background. Others believe default branching is economically motivated as it allows a search engine to keep users on its site longer. However, a qualitative study of how Chinese users perceive branching versus backtracking would be interesting since their default action is opposite of that for the American and European users, who have been previously studied.
Update: found the paper - http://jeffhuang.com/Final_Branching_WSDM12.pdf
Here's the quote:
Users in the Chinese market nearly always branch [what the authors call opening links in new windows], a behavior forced by their search engines' default settings. Some people speculate [footnote for http://www.quora.com/China/Why-do-most-hyperlinks- on-Chinese-websites-open-a-new-window-tab] that this default started because Internet access is slower in China and so branching enables Web pages to load in the background. Others believe default branching is economically motivated as it allows a search engine to keep users on its site longer. However, a qualitative study of how Chinese users perceive branching versus backtracking would be interesting since their default action is opposite of that for the American and European users, who have been previously studied.