**by Kim Krause Berg**
If you wanted to research something—the musician Johnny Cash, for
example—would you go to a search engine or a library? There are many
studies on search usage. It's safe to say that at least 50% of people
now turn to search engines for information. That number increases for
certain types of searches, such as shopping or health information. If
you are young and grew up in the technology age, the likelihood
increases. So our young person may try Google and type in "Johnny
Cash" at first. But I doubt it.
Without boring you with the case study statistics and latest
scientific research, we are, as a human race, getting smarter. Ten
years ago, we may have typed the singer's name alone, but today, we
know better and so do search engines. Therefore, we might try "Johnny
Cash movie posters" or "Johnny Cash collectibles". Or, "old movie
posters" and then drill down to individual names; or instead of
"collectibles", choose "memorabilia" or specific "old records"; or
"vintage Johnny Cash" or we might search by year, individual name,
song name, movie name, or lyrics.
As a site owner, how do you structure your information architecture
for easy search? As a marketer, how do you know what words to optimize
for and when you dig up the top used phrases, do you make a separate
page for each one? Wouldn't that make for a gigantic web site that
will confuse everybody? Welcome to information overload.
Search engines are like mini-interviewers. We arrive looking for
information and a search engine interviews us. Whether or not you're
aware of it, search results actually influence where you may go next.
In a paper called Shifts of Focus in Information Retrieval Interaction
<http://www.asis.org/annual-97/shifts.htm>
, David Robins of Louisiana State University writes:
During the course of information retrieval interactions, users may
change the focus of their attention to various aspects of their
information problem. These changes in focus, or interaction shifts are
the subject of this paper. This phenomenon is readily observed in
mediated database searching, from which careful analysis of the dialog
among users, search intermediaries, and information retrieval (IR)
systems reveals changes of search/interview focus.
He talks about a shift in focus, which can occur at any time during
the dialog between a user and the search intermediary.
This is user behavior that most marketers don't consider. He breaks
shifts into categories:
From broader/narrower/related terms to broader/narrower/related terms
From general topic to specific topical concerns
From topical discussion to non-topical discussions
From one topical/non-topical discussion to another
Any other unexpected type of shift that occurs in the data
Robins writes, "Although a user's behavior may be intentional and
rational, it may not be linear or appear logical". If you know
precisely what you're looking for, the information tends to be more
stable and focused. If your search query is not as well defined and
more uncertain, so might be your search results. Marketers allow room
for this by creating pages that are variations on a theme. Whether or
not these "throwing darts and hoping to make a hit" pages actually
convert is another area of study.
What if you didn't need to come up with different search phrases
yourself? Could search engines do the "thinking" for you? This was
explored and presented in, If At First You Don't Succeed, Let the
Search Engine Try <http://live.psu.edu/story/40091>
, by Jim Jansen, Penn State associate professor of information
sciences and technology and Danielle Booth, information sciences and
technology student and Amanda Spink, Queensland University of
Technology, Australia.
They found that search terms in 22 percent of queries were
reformulated or changed to better convey the information the user was
seeking.
They typically moved to narrow their query at the start of the
session, moving to reformulation in the mid and latter portions of the
sessions, Jansen said. It appears that the assistance to narrow the
query and alternate query terms would be most beneficial immediately
after the initial query submission.
Their findings on searcher behavior helps us to understand why search
engines are trying to find new ways to come up with automated search
assistance systems, recommendations and query reformulation
assistance, such as "Did you mean..." Interestingly, they also found
that searchers rather stubbornly don't ask for help because perhaps,
"they are too focused on using their own search terms to find
information." Marketers may be falling into this trap as well.
Microsoft's new Bing search engine is labeled as a "new Decision
Engine". Its technology hopes to help searchers make more informed
decisions by being more intuitive. How is Bing reading our minds? They
studied how people use the Web. Their research showed that two-thirds
of searches required refinement or requery and 30 percent of searches
are abandoned because the results were not satisfactory. They set out
to test certain areas where they found that people are more likely to
want assistance, such as health, travel, shopping and local business.
They approach search as a series of tasks, similar to the way
usability reviews are performed. Bing hopes to simplify tasks and
offer insight during the search dialog with its users.
It's true that in some circles user personas and their use in
software and web site development are debated. However, we know for
sure that understanding each type of customer is vital. When keyword
searching, it may help to remove yourself from the picture and look
for how different people are looking for what you offer. What do they
call it? Do different cultures and age groups call your items by
different names? Are there sales funnels and landing pages on your
site designed for specific groups of people with different goals?
Success in search engines was never quantity of pages vs. quality. It
still is not. Rather, search engine market success is keenly tied to
understanding user behavior and this is becoming more and more obvious
every day.
Opinions expressed in the article are those of the author, and not
necessarily Search Engine Land.
Kim Krause Berg
<http://searchengineland.com/author/kim-krause-berg/>
is a Usability Consultant for UsabilityEffect.com <
http://usabilityeffect.com>
and Founder of Cre8asiteForums <http://cre8asiteforums.com>
. Her work combines usability testing with a working knowledge of
search engine optimization.
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