Are you finding relevant results ...

as a searcher?

[Liane]

Today, my niece told me that while on vacation she met Will Smith. Being 23 years old, she was awestruck by the popular star and told me he was "as tall as a tree".

I was curious, (I've always liked that kid) so I decided to search on Google for ... will smith biography. The star was nowhere to be found! I was astounded. Instead a message popped up saying, "will" is a very common word and was not included in your search.

I thought, OK ... maybe if I use capitals ... so I typed Will Smith biography. Still nothing.

I then searched for "Will Smith biography" and I thought ahha ... success! But the first site listed had nothing but links to sites about the actor.

Aside from the obvious problems, is any one else getting completely irrelevant or "left field" results when searching for anything other than the obvious business related keywords?

To be honest, that was the very first time I've ever used quotes when searching. I've never had that much trouble finding what I was looking for on Google before.

Does Joe surfer know to use "quotes" if they can't find satisfactory results? Does your mother, father, brother, uncle, etc.?

[DerekH]

As a UK member, who on *earth* is Will Smith?

Is he someone famous?

Never heard of him.
Is he a singer, an actor, an SEO?
DerekH

[bekyed]

Lol! shows how much time you spend on the net!
Will smith is a famous search engine optimisation specialist known worldwide.

Bek

:)

[c1bernaught]

Some...

DerekH: You need to be "gettin jiggy wit it" and being that we just went through the florida update "welcome to miami" you will need to add "song" or you'll be buried in hotels...

[rfgdxm1]

The problem is if Google included stop words in searches, this would typically result in lousy SERPs. Joe Surfer thus needs to learn how to use quotes in such cases. BTW, adding a + before Will works too. Using quotes is something *every* searcher should know. Very useful when searching for a title of a book, film, etc.

[claus]

biography +will smith

- when words are too common and hence omitted, the way to force them back is the plus sign. I believe it was like this pre-Florida too
/claus

[rfgdxm1]

>Does Joe surfer know to use "quotes" if they can't find satisfactory results? Does your mother, father, brother, uncle, etc.?

If they don't know, Google has:

"will" is a very common word and was not included in your search. [details]

Just click on "details", and follow the instructions how to force a word to be searched.

[edited by: WebGuerrilla at 12:53 am (utc) on Dec. 3, 2003]

[1milehgh80210]

Hey Liane:
Next time tell your niece to use alltheweb.com for her search.
Using your example they have several (4-5) information pages on page one SERPS -near the bottom- that fit the bill nicely.
No quotes, extra clicking necessary. )

[Mardi_Gras]

I will say that smart searchers will simply dump Google, and use perhaps Teoma, which lists the official Will Smith site as #1 result and offers three directly related searches. That's without having to add plus signs in front of the search term.

Too bad Google can't figure that out.

[edited by: WebGuerrilla at 12:58 am (utc) on Dec. 3, 2003]

[johnypalillo]

Is easy for us with Google being our everyday interface to detect "details" links or modifiers to the search string, the casual, "not professional" surfer just want to write Will Smith Biography and take some relevant results.

Google in his war against SEO is losing the point of view of common surfer.

(Sorry about my bad english)

[edited by: WebGuerrilla at 1:00 am (utc) on Dec. 3, 2003]

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