End user searching

They do not understand how to!

[richardb]

Recently I was asked to help supervise testing of a site (stifles a yawn). No big surprises until I used a quick questionnaire to ascertain target keywords associated with the site. Oh dear, what a jaw dropping set of replies.

“why do we want to refine a search”
“vertical search engines, what’s the point”
“DMOZ is bl**dy confusing, it’s taken me 10 minutes to find the category you wanted”
…

Test group

Age: 25 – 50
Gender: All male (no sexist jokes please girls :) )
Education: HND – Degree level
Background: Professional (white collar)
Profession: Technical – manufacturing sector

Ability to interrogate search engines – nil

Not one single member of the test group understood how to OR ever used any advanced search techniques. I might have expected this 2 – 3 years ago but today! It really shook me.

It also helped me to understand why so many people once they find a search engine they “like” they stay with it. What suggestions do the good people on this forum have to increase awareness?

I’m not talking about end users who are too thick to live but the average professional who uses the net partly for business and in part at home.

Rich

[DaveN]

Every so often we get a few of six form student to come into the office and give then the products we sell on the net and tell them to find them using whatever searches they like best.

we are just about to run the same test with a over 50's group (new product line) just to make sure we are on the mark.

Dave

[StanBo]

Even a professional (not only an average one :)) is sometimes the slave of his own habits. I'll tell you the truth, I almost never use SEs for search itself (for I have a personal favorite info sources for almost any topic that I might need), but if occasionally the need to search arises (like a bookmark is lost and I fail to remember the needed source url from the very first attempt) my fingers tend to type in "Yahoo.com" faster than I can even think about SE to chose for a particular search…

Thus IMHO it's not feasible to try and increase an audience awareness unless you're into some educational program for www users. Increasing your awareness about www users habits is a must. And more... "don't put all your eggs in one basket" which means don't rely on SEs alone in your promotion efforts:)

[ritch_b]

As professionals, we're all guilty of severely undervaluing our IT skills - even the most basic ones. It's only when facts & figures like this are presented that you realise how many people - from all walks of life - have few skills or little experience with what we class as the most basic 'net tasks.

That's my two penneth anyway - not constructive, just observant.

R.

[StanBo]

I’d say that our guilt lies elsewhere :)
We are too easy to plan, and act, and argue (and name your favorite verb here) as if each and every surfer behaves, and feels, and thinks exactly like we ourselves do. And when presented with the facts that prove us wrong, we're too eager to react with "how can one be so dumb?" :(

[richardb]

Thanks for the replies folks.

To update. I have managed to get a second session with a smaller set of the group, (Wednesday morning). I've put together an FAQ with links showing “how to what to do”. Will post the results if anyone wants to know.

Any specifics that people would like to see included?

Enjoy the weekend

Rich

[olwen]

Profession: Technical – manufacturing sector

Ability to interrogate search engines – nil

Not one single member of the test group understood how to OR ever used any advanced search techniques. I might have expected this 2 – 3 years ago but today! It really shook me.

I think the problem is obvious

[cornwall]

>>End user searching - They do not understand how to!

As professionals, it is not our job to change peoples search habits. That is up to the press, search engines themselves, schools, ones small children or whoever.

As a webmaster our aim is to get as many "qualified" people to look at an individual website as possible.

Therefore you have to act on what people actually do do when they seach the net.

By all means find out, I particularly like:-

>>Every so often we get a few of six form students to come into the office and give then the products we sell on the net and tell them to find them using whatever searches they like best.

But that is to find out how they do search and we then maximise against that. As an individual I would just accept that I am unlikely to change people's habits, I just have to know what they are doing and work to that. Changing my own maximising over time if people's habits change.

[richardb]

Surely the fact the web pros spend so long on the net and given that they have the time to experiment and therefore are, if you like, the right people given a certain bent to educate, help, show the way forward.

You just have to look at the latest outcry re. G to know that G is so badly flawed that as a SE it’s days are numbered. I’m surprised personally, that WebmasterWorld even bothers to have [webmasterworld.com...] what’s the point? Would I buy shares, yes, and drop them like a stone once my estimated ceiling had been reached.

Don’t get me wrong I think that WebmasterWorld is a superb forum but the over emphasise on G is frightening. Let’s face it, probably 95% of people on this forum understand how to manipulate G and apart from the ethical aspect would – we are beaten by spammers and some of the the most heinous tactics I can think of I can show examples where design companies are obviously designing for the porno industry and give themselves “safe for kids” meta tags, they just don’t care and G cannot pick this up!

I do think that the design fraternity needs to “help out”, guides, ways forward and to generally make the public more “savvy”. We have made numerous spam requests over the last 6 months to G and not 1 has been upheld.

In fact, to date our offline advertising is now more effective than online, which has got to be a big kick in the teeth, given that we are a web and multimedia design company, online we cannot beat the spammers, unless we stoop to unethical tactics, how utterly humiliating is that?

So to conclude yes I do think that web designers, developers need to educate, if we don’t who will? Certainly not the SE’s with their eye on the financial market!

Rich after 2 bottles of wine o a Sunday night.