Forum Moderators: phranque
From the article,
"Internet surfers are increasingly favoring direct navigation and bookmarks over search engines and Web links, according to a study released Wednesday. WebSideStory, a San Diego, Calif.-based company that measures Internet audiences, said that as of Feb. 6, nearly 52 percent of Web surfers arrived at sites by direct navigation and bookmarks, compared with about 46 percent during the same period last year."
You can read the complete Web Side Story news release at:
[websidestory.com...]
People are creatures of habit.
People tighten their rotation of sites for efficiency.
People expand their rotation of sites when necessary.
but the question that is always raised...
the question that must always be raised...
How do 'new' sites get into the rotation?
Then again, there seems to be more ad hoc evidence around that people are becoming disenchanted with Web search as a whole - those who say they "cant find what they are looking for" however are casual browsers using default installations and usually "sponsored" SERPS - MSN, AOL, etc. They dont know about Wisenut, AlltheWeb, Teoma, or maybe even Google. In fact talked to one UK based CEO whose company puts a significant amount of money into a web prescence who had never heard of Google last month.
* a newbie searches ten times unsuccessfully before finding a site worthy of being added to the Favorites folder.
* an oldbie searches successfully on the first attempt and re-visits the Favorite site nine more times while the newbie is still searching.
They both found the site, but the searching/navigation ratio is very different. The second scenario also represents a shift towards maximimum total revenue within an industry... and higher stakes for being found at the top of the heap.
Reality Check: But that would be common sense now wouldn't it?
That may be for something like a slide show script. Same thing when I first started and went looking for graphics. I had to search and search before finding good ones. After going through many, many pages at a search engine, when I'd find a really good site I'd bookmark it.
When there's a good bookmark collection in many categories, there's less need to use a search engine for those unless it's for a specific that hasn't made its way into the bookmarks yet. Not so when people are new users, it takes a long time to gather up a good bookmark collection.
Almost all were found through search engines in the first place, and most likely a lot of other people bookmarked those same sites. So naturally, after a site has been around for a while it'll have been bookmarked a lot and the percentage arriving through search engines will be less.
Looking for those is not exactly a shopping experience, which is different. When shopping for a book, someone won't necessarily go to a search engine to look for "books about fishing," they'll go to a site that sells books, and the site with the best branding will win - they'll type it into the address bar without even needing to go to bookmarks. But if they're looking for "fishing gifts for men" they'll have to search on that, or search for fishing tackle or equipment. However, if they want something unique like a crystal paperweight or snowglobe with a marlin inside, they've got a tough searching job on their hands. If they ever find a well optimized site with a page that's been optimized for fishing gifts, which is *precisely* what I would do if I were doing a site about gifts for men, they'll bookmark it. Then they'll go back for Christmas if they found their guy's birthday gift there. So SEO helps the end user in the long run.
>Wouldn't this mean that its best for relevent serps to returned, not just those with most money
It certainly would from the searcher's point of view, Josk. And it may possibly be practical after all in gaining favor. It's purely conjecture, but that may be one of the reasons Overture's new rules require that the link go directly to the page that applies to the keyword instead of the main index page that's more broad and general. From the searchers perspective it'll make those Overture listings more valuable by saving them time hunting through sites they click on. It's just a guess, but maybe it's possible people have been passing those up to some degree to find pages that are more specific. It can get very tiring to keep finding the same 3 general pages in the listings for multiple searches.
That article may have limited value in view of the source of the data, but it makes a good case for doing up a sites that are worth bookmarking.
