Acorrding to search engine studies, men look for advice - and themselves - on computer search engines more than turning to people in their day to day lives.

A poll conducted by MSN Search found that search engines are the first port of call for nearly half of men seeking advice. Family are consulted by a third, while partners are the sounding board of choice for only one in four men.

In comparison, the study into gender search patterns reveals that women still opt for more traditional advice options, with one in three rating family as their number one choice for help and information.

Have we put such a premium on being knowledgable and being right that asking or discussing is seen as weakness?

Male search vanity apparently knows no bounds. Almost a third of men admit to searching for themselves online and awarding themselves an average 80 per cent satisfaction rating for their general searching abilities. By contrast, just over one in five women have searched for their own name.

One in 12 men admitted to looking up ex-partners to uncover what they’ve been up to since splitting up, compared to just four per cent of women.

I’m in Google or Yahoo, therefore I am?

And it seems our attention spam is shorter.

While women are happy to look through six or seven results returned by a search query, men typically only refer to two or three before becoming impatient and refining their search or moving on to a new search altogether.

As a result men devote an average of just three minutes to each of the 42 searches they conduct each week, compared to the five minutes women spend on 30 searches a week.