Marketing

How We Interact With Search Engines

We use them everyday, infact without them, the internet would be useless, I guess it’s hard to imagine why such websites of importance are private companies rather than free or government run services.

Ok course, before you wonder if I have gone mad - I’m talking about search engines.

In the beginning, we all know the internet was a military experiment in the US, a way to connect the airforce, navy and armed forces together, and share information. As we can clearly see it’s become far more useful than another way to help kill people - not that I don’t enjoy a good bit of killing don’t get me wrong.

When I wrote this article I talk about what searche engines are to me, and how I think other people interact with them, I could  be wrong, but often with these things its from the outsider looking in.

Firstly, lets start at the beginning of the computer usage. When I start up my internet explorer (many of you are boo’ing and hissing right now, but I tell ye what, I dont care so go ram a fork in your eye) I see my IGoogle Home page, its customised with my PHP header template, rss feed from wired, bbc news, technology, local weather, currency converter, clock, php function finder & my php class rss feed - I even have a lady bug to entertain me when I’m bored. I’ve Included screenshot so you can laugh. 

You can click on the thumbnail to laugh at the bigger one. But basically the point of this was already to see how this search engine (although I hate it more than my mother) is affecting my life. I’m overloaded with information every time I load up my page. I use all of these feeds, even for inspiration when I’m working. I’m not alone either, lots of people do this, infact because our search engines organise the information we need most frequently better and better, we come to rely on them.

How many of us start complaining when a service is down for maintenance or encounters technical problem? Well most of us really. We don’t turn around and go, oh I’ll find an alternative, or actually get out that ye olde thing called the yellow pages.

Our way of thinking has changed, when it comes to our searching habbits, it’s said that over 90% of of the traffic to our websites is within the first page of traffic, with the hieghest obviously coming from the top 5 pages. Sometimes it makes me wonder why search engines bother to show the other few hundred pages. I even think that most of us wouldn’t care of we only saw one.

What is sad to realise is that the information on the first page isn’t and almost rarely is the best information, infact usually it has been optmised in such a way to get top, just to grab your attention, and even then, not always in the most responsible ways or methods.

Pages which load slowly are often discarded with the mashing of the back button, often making us go back to far, only to start the search process over again.

Because we want information here, now and fast, we often can skip on quality. For example, nearly anything you put into google, and many times in yahoo, you will get a wiki page. As great as wiki is, the information is not always correct, yet people interpret it as gospel. A few examples (at the time of this article) in google are : ‘cheese’, ‘rainbow six’, ‘glass’, infact even as I write this, I struggle to search for anything where Wiki doesn’t make a top 5 result.

I guess the danger is the fact we are shrouding our own knowledge. Search engines have changed the way we use the internet, and without them, the reality is, there is no internet. If they were to disappear overnight, yes we would remember a handful of websites, but how would we find any new ones? Word of mouth? Maybe thats better…

Thanks

Wuup Team

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