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Jakob on Google

Information Foraging: Why Google Makes People Leave Your Site Faster

         

Made In Sheffield

3:24 pm on Jun 30, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



[useit.com ]

Not had time to read it yet but sure to be interesting...

TheRealTerry

1:35 pm on Jul 2, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I may have come off as speaking purely commercial, but the same ideas I mentioned apply to informational sites for both commercial or non-commercial reasons. In fact, I would think the opposite would be true for an informational site: faster visits are better. From the users standpoint, if the information they want can't be found relatively quickly, especially if they are arriving from a search engine where the result listing would imply their information resides on the page they are clicking on to, then the site has failed to perform well, or otherwise has organizational and structure deficiencies. This is exactly why bots were invented to crawl deeper into sites rather than relying on the description and title information of the homepage being submitted (well, that and spamming). By indexing multiple pages, the search results can take someone seeking information directly to the page they want.

I guess my point as clearly as I can make it is, this article does not understand that the user and site owner are all best served if the visitors' requests for either a product or information are answered as quickly and efficiently as possible. I am much more likely to return to a site that serves me better and faster, for an purpose, than one that causes me to meander and hunt.

annej

2:33 pm on Jul 2, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



As far as a purely informational site, outside of pure personal novelty reasons, what difference do the who, what and how long's matter?

Terry, That a huge amount of research and writing time has gone into the site. That you want to make a difference in a specific area of study. That the original reason for the Internet was to make information more available. That my sales support the site and my study of a topic that fascinates me.

By indexing multiple pages, the search results can take someone seeking information directly to the page they want.

Most of my visitors from search engines come in to deeper pages from very specific searches. Since I keep my articles short so it only takes about 3 minutes to read one short visits make sense.

Claus, Thanks for the suggestions on how to look at effectiveness of my site. You gave me a fresh new way to look at it all. The popularity of my newsletter with extremely rare unsubscribes is encouraging so that part is working. It just occurred to me that I do a lot of linking to sites that will give added information on a topic. Maybe I'm losing a lot of visitors that way. Maybe instead of links imbedded in the text I need to put them at the bottom of the article so I won't lose people before they finish reading it. As a resource I do want to send visitors to other good sources of information on a specific topic but not too soon. So many things to consider.

Merch, Love your informavore, commercavore & omninfovore idea. My visitors are definitely informavors who just might be enticed to nibble on something commercial now and then. ;)

jordanm

6:49 pm on Jul 2, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



"is information scent: users estimate a given hunt's likely success" per Jakob....

This reiterates the importance of page title and description. Then the clues have to be on the page or people leave for greener pastures. Personally, I think Jakob just wanted to write about the Informavore concept, using google as a catchy part to his title. It seems to me that this applies to any search result on any search engine. If my title and description don't give you a sense that there is something valuable to be found you won't go forward to my page. If my page doesn't provide value quickly then you will leave to greener pastures. It also depends on the surfer and then we'd need to dive into personality types and how certain personalities might interact with the web. Some are impatient, others patient, etc. Can you identify your market to that degree though? Probably not so you have to design for the lowest denominator and assume all are impatient web surfers that want their food right away without much effort..

Brett_Tabke

10:09 am on Jul 3, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



I think the whole article is further info about random surfing is a dying sport:

[webmasterworld.com...]

annej

5:47 pm on Jul 3, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Even though what Jakob says isn't new it still helps to be reminded of things and putting them in an amusing way helps get our attention.

Even though he was saying stickiness is not the only thing the article got me to look again at my stickiness and finally face the fact that my lovely css "text-decoration:none;" has got to go. Most of my visitors aren't that web savvy and I will have to unbeautify my site a bit and put the underlines back. :(

rjohara

5:57 am on Jul 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Ha, that was an amusing piece. For people who want to study the subject more, this information foraging work is a simple adaptation of a large field in ecology and animal behavior called "optimal foraging theory." It's been around for years. If you search for that phrase you'll find lots of references, or you can take a browse through any textbook on ecology or animal behavior.

meestajohn

7:09 am on Jul 8, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Its nice to see the later posts in this thread are a little less critical of what the right-honorable mr Nielsen has to say than the first few - after all, he's usually right.

Generally speaking, I find that if you can strip something down to a model based on simple animal motivations you get a much clearer idea of what you're want to achieve.
I guess it can be a bit hard to accept the idea that we are basically just complicated eating, defecacating and self-replicating machines but i think once we do it becomes easier to predict and model our actions.

Ill reiterate the 'old idea presented well' statement but I feel I should pick him up on one small point..

Rabbits aren't rodents, they have two sets of pointy front teeth - rodents have only the top set. This makes rabbits more closely related to things like deer and elephants.

caine

1:26 pm on Jul 8, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



quite enjoyed reading the article, and some of the link off alert box topics. Makes a lot of sense, simplicity is the way.

USMerch

10:38 am on Jul 11, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



House rats are classified in the phylum Chordata , subphylum Vertebrata, class Mammalia, order Rodentia, family Muridae.

Rabbits are classified in the phylum Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata, class Mammalia, order Lagomorpha, family Leporidae.

Roe deer, common to europe, are classified in the phylum Chordata , subphylum Vertebrata, class Mammalia, order Artiodactyla, family Cervidae.

The musk deer, a smaller asian cousin, has rather large canine teeth, especially for being such a small deer, and is also classified in the phylum Chordata , subphylum Vertebrata, class Mammalia, order Artiodactyla, family Cervidae...

as for canines, wolves are classified in the phylum Chordata , subphylum Vertebrata, class Mammalia, order Carnivora, family Canidae.

Me, I would be Chordata, Verbrata, Mammalia, OmnINFOvora, l337idae..... marginally related to OmnINFOvora, SEOidae,the two families have also been known to interbreed producing OmnINFOvora, SPAMidae....

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