I was reading an article from the Chomsky Reference website and found an article (Citation research) where the importance of FOCUS is made relevant in attempting to find out why internet search users input the words or phrases that they do, in order to find out more information on a subject or product.

Citation research

A little more than 20 years ago, I took on a small research project for the Head of the Linguistic Department, Jay Keyser.  He had to introduce Noam Chomsky at a Kresge Auditorium event and wanted me to find out how frequently Chomsky was cited by others.  We were using Dialog searching by then, so I set about researching in Arts and Humanities, Social Science and Science Citation Indices.  Jay made a joke at the event that Chomsky was more popular than God (Chomsky 12,847 citations and the Bible 10,256.  Noam came right back with a retort, yes, but you don’t know why they are citing me!It also turned out that Chomsky was the most cited living author. To me, the more interesting aspect was how often he was cited in all three databases. Should I redo the search?  Do you want to?

 

Being the most cited Author in History is no small feat.