Quadrille - 8:47 am on Jun 24, 2006 (gmt 0)

when i worked for a mid sized newspaper, month after month, the top searches were for the domain name or variations of it. people type into search engine boxes like it was the address bar.

Well, you learn something new every day! Thanks!

But that's still not an issue here - such 'searchers' know what they want, and so will click on the site they chose, regardless of the detail.

Someone who is genuinely 'searching' - ie has not already made up their mind, is pretty unlikely to type a domain name; a key word or phrase is the norm, and so i still believe those seacrhes are the ones the matter.

The reason I make this distinction is simply that many folk do not have their domain name either in their description or in the ODP description, so searching for it often gets a very different result compared to a 'genuine' search.