The following tips are simple and time-saving methods that have proven to be effective in conducting Internet searches.

1. Knowledge is Power
Reading the “Help” or “Tips” menu allows the user to make use of valuable information with respect to performing an effective search. The time spent figuring out the difference between a search directory and a search engine, which is explained in understandable terms in the Help or Tips Menu, represents one of the most optimal uses of the search tool.

2. Preparation is Key
Before sitting down in front of your computer, one critical time-saving technique is to take some time to think beforehand what you are looking to find. It is helpful for the user to craft a list of search terms with which to work. In addition, it helps to use the best search engine for the job. Research is key again here: would it be better to use a well-known search engine (Google, Yahoo) or try other lesser-known engines (e.g., WiseNut, Teoma, QueryServer, alltheweb or Dogpile) that search using multiple queries? There are also websites that cater to financial, government or legal information (e.g., EDGAR (SEC) (http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/srch-edgar), US-State-Local Records (http://brbpub.com/pubrecsites.asp) or FindLaw (http://www.findlaw.com)) that may help narrow your search and allow you to find precise information pertinent to your query. Since not all search tools are similar, one effective technique is to search using a variety of search tools. Depending upon the tool used — each of which has its own strengths and weaknesses — may result in profoundly different results that hinges on which tool is used. A simple way to optimize search results is to run the identical search on different tools, and subsequently comparing the first ten sites retrieved by each tool.

3. Using the Right Search Tool
One valuable search technique is to utilize the search tool to its fullest potential. You should probably start off using the simple mode to enter search terms. This allows the user to use natural language search terms and generally obtain good results without a high level of computer expertise. Once you have mastered the simple mode, or if you’re not finding what you want, the advanced searching methods provide more control by using more complex search features (e.g., Boolean language, use of terms such as “+”, “-”, parenthetical expressions (e.g., Dodgers or Angels) and other advanced features. One helpful tip when looking for a certain phrase is to place quotation marks around the search term, which generally leads to superior results. Advanced Search modes do not take much more time or energy to learn, and allow for more options in searching and locating relevant websites.

4. Using Unique Terms to Obtain More Specific Results
Search tools use language to retrieve results, choosing the right words is pivotal in order to locate the information you require. It is thus advisable to use specific, descriptive words to optimize your search technique ad results. Some search engines allow you to use such features as “Clustering” or “Folders” (e.g., Teoma, WiseNut and All the Web) and “Refine” (Alta Vista) that give the user the option to use other terms to use when searching.

5. Take Advantage of the Directories in Search Tools or Subject Directories
Directories are available on most search tools and aid in organizing web sites into different categories — which allows the searcher to focus a search even more. Utilizing these categories to narrow your search is a smart and efficient way to get the information you need.

6. Use Capital Letters to Help Refine Your Search
The use of capitalization when searching will in some search engines provide more relevant results. This is because the use of capitals will frequently fetch web sites that possess the search term in the title. Therefore, this may prove to be quite useful when you are looking for terms that are not capitalized unless they are in a title (e.g., “Katy Perry” or “University of California at Berkeley” may prove more fruitful with the capitalization and provide a smaller and more relevant search result.

7. Use Quotations or Other Symbols to Specify a Phrase
Search tools do not know whether a search is for “lesson” or “plans.” The default is typically lesson or plans in simple searching. Use quotations to surround a phrase such as “lesson plans.” However, again a word of caution, when using simple modes in some databases like Alta Vista, searching with quotation will often produce less effective results.

8. Know When to Quit and Think Outside the Box
A good rule of thumb is that, if you’ve reviewed around 25-50 sites without finding what you were looking for, quit and try something different. This can be done by rephrasing your search, using another search tool, or taking a break to rethink your query. This is common sense: after all, there is no “ultimate” search engine that will automatically find what you need. The more complicated the topic, the more sophisticated the search must be to maximize results. Use a variety of search tools and remember that the number of relevant sites is more critical than the number of sites searched.

This is a guest article by Ruben Corbo, a writer for the website Broadband Expert where you can find high speed internet providers in your area and compare prices on different deals for your wireless internet necessities.

Related articles

• Search Engine Users Dislike Personalized Search But Like the Results (searchenginewatch.com)
• What is organic search? (marketing.yell.com)

The post Useful Tips for Productive and Efficient Internet Searches appeared first on Graham Jones.

“The growing need for practical search marketing and social media training is more apparent than ever in the B2B Marketing space,” says Conference Chair, Mary O’Brien, and host of the upcoming PPC Summit Presents…Search Marketing and Social Media Success in September. “We designed this event to provide a unique approach to search and social media training, offering real-world case study lessons and applicable strategies that other training conferences don’t offer.”

The full day of strategy sessions kicked off with an opening keynote from Gord Hotchkiss, Enquiro CEO, who shared findings from the comprehensive business-to-business marketing research study — the BuyerSphere Project. Later Hotchkiss, Patricia Neuray of Business.com, Frederick Vallaeys of Google and Valerie Bolduc of Microsoft answered top-of-mind B2B Search Marketing questions during the Expert Hot Seat panel discussion. Jay Middleton, Adobe’s Senior Worldwide Search Marketing Manager, led the afternoon keynote on “The Future of B2B Search Marketing”. The day was chock full of instructive panel discussions, expert Q&A and case study lessons delving into search marketing and social media hot topics from keyword research, landing page optimization, paid search, search engine optimization, press release optimization and much more.

Many themes were covered throughout the event, but the main takeaways focused exclusively on B2B search engine marketing best practices and how marketers can apply them to get better B2B online marketing ROI. The overall B2B case study data concluded the critical keys to successful optimization are: Gain a better understanding of buyer behaviors, create and manage targeted keyword lists and integrate Search Marketing and Social Media for greater market outreach.

Here are some essential B2B Search and Social Media Marketing conference takeaways:

• Utilize Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media, Landing Pages and Press Release Optimization to boost Search Marketing ROI
• Get to know your audience and stay close to your customers
• Make sure sales and marketing teams are tightly integrated to ensure the sale
• Understand buyer behaviors and customer search habits to help optimize search campaigns
• Integrate Marketing and Social Media channels to further support lead generation and foster branding
• Diversify Paid Search campaigns to boost search engine marketing results
• Incorporate targeted keywords into all Marketing/Sales/Social Media communications
• Pay attention to analytics and focus on cost-per-customer rather than cost-per-lead

Overall the expert led strategy sessions revealed many ‘insider’ search engine marketing campaign secrets for marketers interested in driving B2B profits. The event closed with a lively networking reception where attendees took advantage of the opportunity to speak directly with the experts and get their questions answered. Attendees left the conference armed with a new found knowledge and strategies for integrating search and social media to reach new markets and understand customer buying behaviors to shorten the sales cycle.

The post Search Marketing & Social Media Elite Teach Practical Lessons at B2B Search Strategy Summit appeared first on Graham Jones.

So, there are a couple of questions you need to ask about this so-called “fact” of search behaviour. Firstly, where do the “search experts” get their data from? And secondly, if it were really true why would search engines provide us with more than one page of results? Indeed, why would they give us ten on a page if most of us never went beyond the top five? Perhaps the search engines know something that the search experts do not. Perhaps the search engines know that people DO go further than the top five results and that they do turn over the page.

The notion that the vast majority of people never look beyond the top five results comes mostly from eye-tracking research demonstrating where people look on a search results page. The maps of eye movements show quite clearly that no-one in those studies looks down the page. Their eyes are focused on the top five results, with most of that activity on the top three.

But here’s the problem with making snap judgements on eye-tracking studies like this. The research on Google search results pages show that no eyes ever look at the sponsored links. The adverts which Google helpfully places on the right hand side of each results page get virtually zero attention. Well, how come then Google earned $28 billion last year as a result of us clicking on them…? If we did not see them, how come we clicked on them? What eye-tracking studies do is show where our pupils are pointed – they do not show where our brain was looking, nor do they show what our peripheral vision sees. In other words, don’t rely on eye-tracking to tell you what we do online – it is only part of the story.

Another factor in the myth of the “top five” search results being important is the information companies see on their analytics data. When a firm drills down into this data they frequently find that people are visiting pages from search engines when those pages do not even appear on the front page of the results, let alone in the top five. If people never went beyond the top five, how come so many people visit sites from search engine links when those links are not on the first page?

It all suggests that the behaviour that “search specialists” claim that people are making is not entirely based on all the facts. Yes, there is a “tendency” for people to concentrate on the top five search results but they are not the be-all and end-all for you.

This is all revealed in a recent survey which shows that 95% of people go BEYOND the top five results on a search page. In fact 70% of people go further than the first page, with 15% of people going through the FIRST FIVE PAGES of the results. Now, I admit, this is not a completely scientific study – but then the claims that we ONLY look at the top five results are not based on exact science either.

The lack of scientific rigour on the SEO claims of needing to be in the top five, the analytics data from several businesses and this new survey show that focusing on being high up in the search results may not be as important as we once thought.

Related articles

• What is search engine optimisation (SEO)? (marketing.yell.com)
• Eye tracking shows the power of social content for SEO (eyetrackingupdate.com)
• Google+ Status Updates Now Appearing in Organic Search Results (hubspot.com)

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Most search results fail to produce what we are looking for (data from Keyword Discovery)

There is a psychological phenomenon known as “social acceptance theory”. If something becomes accepted wisdom by a large enough group of people, we all believe it because to do otherwise would mean falling out of line, being too different. Millions of people believe, avidly, that search has changed their lives. And they are right. Google and their competitors have revolutionised the way we get information making it faster, easier and more convenient than ever before.

But because we are so convinced by the positives, we ignore the negatives about search engines. What we don’t see – even though it is staring us in the face – is the abject failure of search engines to find what we want. Take one search as an example. I want to find a project manager based in Reading. So I pop off to Google and type in “project manager reading uk“. What do I get? A list of sites with job adverts – people who are advertising for a project manager’s job in reading. That’s not what I wanted. You might say I failed to give Google a detailed enough search term but equally it failed to interpret my keywords accurately enough.

This is a common problem. Indeed, most of the time Google fails to produce what we want. According to the latest figures from Keyword Discovery, only 48% of people click through to a search result having typed something into Google. You know as well as anyone else that often when you type in something to Google, you can see that the results presented were not what you were looking for, so you try another search phrase. With 52% of our searches failing to produce what we want, this means that more than half of your time on Google is completely unproductive.

Traditional wisdom has it that we go back to Google and type in a longer phrase, but the latest data on search phrase shows that we are actually reducing the number of words we type in – not increasing them. A year ago only 30% of our searches were a single word, now that’s risen to 46%. This suggests that we have given up trying to be specific with our searches because we know that what we get is still not what we want, so we may as well save a bit of time and only type in one word and still get a bunch of rubbish.

For instance, if I type in just “project manager” into Google, the first handful of results are not about jobs but about being a project manager and project management. Plus there are useful sites such as Wikipedia in the list which might help provide links to other sources of information in my hunt for a project manager in Reading. In other words, Google has been more accurate with the shorter keyword phrase than with the longer one; it has provided me with leads that could help, whereas the longer, seemingly more accurate phrase, led me in the wrong direction.

Worse than all this is the fact that 40% of searches we make are for stuff we have already previously searched for. In other words we are not actually “searching” but instead we are simply “re-finding” something – using Google rather like a telephone directory instead of a “sophisticated” search engine. Yet, the fact we use Google constantly throughout the day means we are so familiar with it we don’t see its faults. Combine that with the need to be seen to be part of the group – social acceptance – claiming that Google really helps, and you have a potent mixture for missing the obvious.

Google is wasting your time. This is especially true if you are in business. If you spend around an hour a day on Google, half that time is unproductive. Multiply that by 10 employees, say, and you’ve lost five hours of work a day – every day. Add to this the fact that because search marketing is seen as important, you now spend even more hours planning, analysing and working on pay per click campaigns for instance. All to produce adverts in a system that mostly fails to deliver what your potential audience actually wants and which we all spend unnecessary hours using.

Now it’s true that people can demonstrate increased business as a result of search marketing and it’s also true that with the right kind of good SEO you can show more traffic to websites via the search engines. But if I put a big yellow bucket on every street corner in town with copies of my ebooks in it, people would take them and I’d be able to “prove” that “yellow bucket marketing” is the way to go. In other words, you are bound to find that search marketing works because that is what you are doing. Do something else and that too will work. Just because search marketing succeeds does not mean that an alternative will not be better. There is a real possibility that people have become so hooked on search dues to familiarity and social acceptance theory that they are missing a better alternative.

And it looks like Google – as well as the other search companies – have also had their eyes closed to an alternative to search which is now biting them on the rear end. Asking people.

Before search engines were invented that’s what you did when you needed help, a solution to a problem, information or advice. You simply asked someone who you thought would know the answer or would know someone who would know. But along came search and we all fell into the trap of thinking it is marvellous. But now, as social network search facilities improve we are discovering in our millions that we can do what we are naturally inclined to do, and that is ask someone. So you can go on to Twitter or LinkedIn and ask people for an answer to your particular problem. Within moments you have an answer and often a link to the very site you need to go to.

People on social networking sites are more accurate than any algorithm fancy engineers can produce at working out what you really mean. You ask a question, say, on Twitter. You get several answers and useful links which you can then go to. No wasting time with useless searches, no wasting time with having to type in different words and no wasting time going to sites that didn’t fulfil their pay per click promise. Asking other people is what we prefer to do, it’s what works and it’s faster and therefore increases our productivity.

Search engines have their place. They certainly do help us and have enabled many businesses to thrive, including mine. Yet we might be missing the obvious because we are all facing in the wrong direction. Search may not be as great as we think it is. Social search may well be the future because it is the past.

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SMX West will deliver more than 50 sessions designed for search marketers of all skill levels and covering the spectrum of Internet marketing topics.

– New to search? Participate in the SMX Boot Camp which covers all the bases of search marketing success: copywriting, link building, paid search advertising fundamentals and search engine friendly web design. After the Boot Camp, you’ll be prepared to participate in the remaining two days of SMX West.

– Got some experience? Learn the latest techniques for achieving superior results in both paid and organic search marketing. There are 20 sessions designed just for your skill level.

– An expert? SMX West has sessions dedicated to keeping you ahead of the curve with topics that only the editors of Search Engine Land can deliver — topics like Search, Domaining and Direct Navigation, Diagnosing Technical SEO Issues, Search, Meet Display; Display, Meet Search, and Measuring How Search Ads Drive Offline Conversions.

This three-day, multiple track conference is programmed by Search Engine Land Editor-in-Chief Danny Sullivan and Executive Editor Chris Sherman – the most experienced and connected search engine marketing industry editorial team anywhere.

Register for SMX West today and pay only $1245, a $350 savings compared to the on-site rate. You get all three-days of sessions, a keynote by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, network activities and special events that make Search Marketing Expo conferences famous.

About Search Marketing Expo – SMX West and Third Door Media
SMX West features sessions just for you, whether you are just starting out in search or looking for advanced tactics, work on an in-house SEM team, hail from an agency, or own your own business.

Attend SMX West for:
– Exceptional content so compelling, you’ll want to implement what you’ve learned before leaving the conference. Super-charged sessions on PPC, SEO, local search, search friendly design and social media marketing will help you succeed today, tomorrow and in the future.
– Invaluable connections made possible by the ultimate mix of structured networking opportunities and social events. SMX makes it easy to make new contacts and exchange ideas with industry thought leaders and colleagues.
– Essential conveniences to help you juggle your every-day responsibilities while maximizing your conference time: always-available and free Wi-Fi; hot lunches, snacks and beverages all day; access to all presentations and tools to plan your custom itinerary.

The Search Marketing Expo – SMX conference series is produced by Third Door Media, Inc. Third Door Media’s mission is to empower Internet and search marketing professionals by providing trusted content and community services they need to be successful. Search Marketing Expo conferences are held around the world and include: SMX West (Santa Clara, CA), SMX East (New York City), SMX Advanced (Seattle, WA and London, England), SMX Munich, SMX Sydney, SMX Xiamen (China) and SMX Stockholm.

Third Door Media publishes Search Engine Land, the leading search marketing news and analysis site. The company also produces Search Marketing Now, a lead-generation marketing solution for suppliers of SEM-related products and services, and operates Sphinn.com, a social news site that allows search and Internet marketers to share news stories, participate in subject-specific discussion forums, and build their professional networks.

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Whilst Google continues to be the global search market leader, brands’ SEO agencies must also value Bing’s search results to ensure visibility in Facebook Graph Search is maximised. In addition to the new social search feature returning Page information, Graph Search can also offer users relevant webpages from Bing, when appropriate to a search.

Graph Search results not only differ for each search, but also for each individual user. Facebook assesses the number of connections between the profile of the person searching and the query and displays results relating to the searcher’s own profile activities and photos first, before displaying other results from friends, public profiles, Pages and Bing search. Prioritising results by what it deems most relevant, Facebook recognises that while people are most likely to using Graph Search for internal results, external webpages will also be valuable information for many.

In time, depending on how frequently Graph Search serves results directly from Bing, Facebook may acquire a percentage of the search market from Google.

In order to capitalise on this potential to have a website visible to Facebook Graph Search users, in-house and agency SEO teams must make sure search activity doesn’t focus solely on Google and they must start to work more closely with social media managers. With Graph Search still in its early stages, the full impact it will have on Bing’s search traffic is still yet to be understood, but it is clear the opportunity must not be overlooked.

Pete Goold, managing director of integrated PR, SEO and social media agency Punch Communications, comments: “Brands could really benefit from integrating SEO and social media strategies to ensure both Facebook Pages and websites are visible in Graph Search. Whilst Google is the number one global search tool, Bing has its foot in the social search door due to its relationship with Facebook and its own social sidebar. This means Microsoft’s search engine must not be ignored.

“Both SEO and social media professionals should carefully watch the evolution of Graph Search as in time it could see people using Facebook more frequently for external web searches.”

For more information about Graph Search and Punch’s integrated approach to PR, SEO and social media, please visit www.punchcomms.com or call +44 (0) 1858 411 600.

Contact: Keredy Andrews info@punchcomms.com +44 (0) 1858 411 600

This press release was issued through eReleases® Press Release Distribution. For more information, visit http://www.ereleases.com.

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People are looking for what you have to offer, so make sure you offer it to them

That’s all noble stuff, of course. Many of the delegates at SES are businesses themselves; quite a few are in the search marketing world who sell  their services to the rest of the business world who are not interested in the geeky stuff. SES performs a valuable service, of course, by sharing knowledge and updating the experts. But therein lies the problem.

When you gather together a group of experts and focus on a topic a psychological phenomenon called “social acceptance theory” comes in to play. What that means is that everyone will agree on the importance of their industry, the fundamental value of search and that the whole arena of search is just brilliant. Yes, they will argue and debate the tiny fragments of detail; but no-one will step out of line and say that search is nonsense.

So I’ll do it for them; search is nonsense. There, I’ve said it. Of course, I’m using the word in its most literal sense, suggesting that the search industry has “no intelligible meaning”. It all makes sense to those geeks in London this week, but to the rest of us it may as well be in Ancient Greek for the sense it makes. It’s rather like a bunch of doctors getting together at a conference. They would be chatting away about the importance of “probiotics in the prevention of rhinoviral URTI”. Got that? Er? OK, I’ll get my doctor friend to translate…! What that means is if you give your kids a balanced diet they are less likely to get a cold.

It’s the same at SES. Put a bunch of experts together, bung in some social acceptance theory and within minutes they are all talking in lingo the rest of the world doesn’t understand. The point of doctors, for example, is to help us maintain our health. So talking in language that separates them fails to do that. The point of search is to enable people to find our online offering. The point of search is not to make it into some great big mystery. And that’s what happens when you “expert-ize” it. The result is language that doesn’t connect with the rest of us – “SSIs for information architecture” is up for grabs today at SES London, for instance.

What we need are search specialists who don’t get too hung up on the nitty-gritty, but tell it to us like it is. In fact, search is so much simpler than the experts might like us to think it is. In just the same way, medicine is much more straightforward than people on £150,000 a year as a GP might like us to believe; most people who visit their doctor get better naturally, with no intervention by their GP other than “let’s keep an eye on it and come back to me in a couple of weeks”. Search is similar; do the right thing and people will find you.

But what is the “right thing”? What you need to find out are the terms people associate with your company or organisation. Then you create web content that matches exactly what they are looking for. That’s it. Google, Bing and Yahoo! do the rest for you.

No doubt SES London will help the specialists find extra ways of helping you; but they will focus on the nitty gritty when all you need to do is concentrate on the big picture. And whatever happens at the Business Design Centre in Islington before the end of the week, one thing is for sure, if you were to produce a one-line summary of the whole event it would be “create exactly the right content for your users”.The SES delegates will “dress that up” as “information architecture”, “keyword analysis” and “analytics”, but it all boils down to the simple fact – EXACTLY the right content is what you need to produce.

As the psychologist Edward de Bono said:

Sometimes the situation is only a problem because it is looked at in a certain way. Looked at in another way, the right course of action may be so obvious that the problem no longer exists.

Those nitty-gritty details being discussed in London are not the problem. The search engine “problem” of being ranked highly and found by potential customers only arises because so many businesses fail to create the content that people are actually looking for. Do that and the search “problem” disappears. Unless, of course, you’re a search geek, influenced by social acceptance who uses language that separates you from the rest of us. To you it’s much more complicated; personally, I prefer simplicity.

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So, Google is no longer a teenager. Today it celebrates being 20-years-old having been incorporated on 4th September 1998. Its gestation was long, having initially been born in January 1996 in a Californian garage. Indeed, Google may never have made it had it not been for the “midwifery” of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos who was one of the first three investors in the fledgeling business.

Back in 1998, the dominant search engines were Yahoo!, Excite and AltaVista. You might also have used “America Online (AOL)” or “Ask Jeeves”. Remember them? Search was much more fragmented back then. Now, Google is dominant with 80% of us relying on it as our primary source of information.

And therein lies a problem. Many people assume that what Google provides them with is the best information on the topic in which they are interested. But that is not necessarily the case.

For instance, back in the late 1970s, early 1908s, I worked at Polydor Records in London.  So if you look up “Polydor Records history” on Google, you find that the top result is a Wikipedia page. Fair enough, you might say. However, as someone who was there at the time, I notice a couple of errors in that Wikipedia page. Sure, I could correct them and add information which is pertinent. But the issue is that anyone reading that page is slightly misinformed. Further down the Google results is a link to a website that provides record industry news. It contains a potted history of Polydor which is factually incorrect.

Here’s the problem: you wouldn’t know unless you were there at the time, working for Polydor records. Before Google, how would you have researched the history of a record company? The chances are you would have asked people – particularly the people who were working for the company.

Nowadays, we don’t ask people; we ask Google. And Google does not always provide the right answer – yet most people default to believing that Google does offer the correct answer.

Indeed, this morning when I was trying to produce the “Happy Birthday” image (above) I searched on Google for the name of the font it uses in its logo so that I could add the words “Happy Birthday” in as close a font as possible. However, Google’s own search engine provides false information about its own font and logo. It leads you towards pages which are just plain wrong. And that’s in the Top 10 results. The best information on the font presumably is from Google itself, and their own page about their font does not appear until the second page of the search results.

If, though, Google were not a search engine and there was no such thing as online search, how would you have known the typeface used by a company in its logo? Well, guess what, you would have spoken to a person. You would have either called Google itself to get the answer, or you would talk to someone you knew in the world of graphic design. Even if they didn’t know themselves, they’d know who to ask.

People are better than search engines

For all their convenience, Google and other search engines are flawed. They do not always provide us with the best answers. Nor do they always tell us the truth or give the highest degree of accuracy.

Of course, that was true before the Internet came along. Books have been published for centuries with inaccuracies and factual errors. So too have research journals and reference documents. However, we would have often cross-checked one source against another. Plus we would have always asked, “people in the know” – individuals with experience or specialist knowledge. Sometimes these would have been the local librarian, at other times it would have been an expert in the field. If we couldn’t contact such people, we would ask someone, such as a colleague or neighbour or friend who would know someone who would know the answers we wanted.

In other words, whatever we were trying to find out, we relied a great deal on other people. And they, generally, would know if the printed material we had been looking at was reliable.

Now, we treat Google as that arbiter of the truth. We expect Google to have done what our personal contacts did in the past – know the truth or know who was telling the truth.

Sadly, that is not the case. Google is not a person, but an algorithm – and a relatively weak one at that. According to Moz, the search engine optimisation firm, only two-thirds of searches result in a click. In other words, for one in every three searches we do, Google doesn’t provide anything we find useful. Furthermore, of the two in three people who do click on a search result, 80% of them return to Google for another search within 10 seconds. That suggests they have discovered that the results Google provided were not what they wanted.

In total, what this means is that 86% of searches result in failure; they do not provide what we wanted. Google will say that this is because of poor search behaviour. But that is asking us to think like engineers, using “boolean” logic and the like. There is much criticism of the quality of search results. Indeed, five years ago I questioned the validity of Google’s search engine.

Google, though, is not daft. The company realises that its search quality needs improving. Indeed, it has recently contracted 10,000 individuals to work on improving the quality of results. That’s an admission that people are better than its algorithm.

Why do we rely on Google?

The problem is, Google is such a fantastic “magic trick”. It can find tons of information in a blink of an eye. That makes it hugely convenient. Plus it does provide us with exciting and engaging stuff. In fact, Google is providing us all with such an illusion it is bending our minds.

Convenience and instant gratification beat having to get in the car, travelling to the library, paying for parking, walking down the road in the rain, trawling through several books, making notes and then going back to the office an hour later. With Google, we can avoid all that, stay in the warm and get the answer in seconds. Or at least we think so.

The problem is, the answer may not be as accurate as what we would have obtained from the library and the librarian.

In other words, we have traded accuracy for convenience.

Donald Trump is right about Google

The convenience, though, comes at another price – bias. Recently, President Donald Trump accused Google of bias, suggesting it was distorting its search results to provide negative news about him at the top of its results.

No doubt, that’s what Mr Trump sees when he searches for his own name. Google’s results are always biased. They depend upon a combination of your search history, the computer you are using and your click history. Mr Trump probably keeps searching for his own name and then clicking on those “fake news” stories just to see how badly he has been treated. Google’s algorithm, in turn, goes “we’ll provide that computer with more of this stuff because that’s clearly what they like”.

Five years ago, the BBC pointed out that search results are not always accurate.

Yet even though we know that, we continue to use search engines because the convenience reigns supreme in our subconscious.

What would we do without Google?

Without Google, we’d feel as though everything is taking longer. Except it might not be. One trip to the library to gain highly accurate information or a couple of phone calls to contacts to do some research might seem it is all taking time. The convenience of Google makes us think we can do the same in a blink of an eye.

But that is not true. We search on Google, find the wrong results, search again, go back again, search for something else, get distracted and eventually get the information. That can take longer than going to the library.

It seems, however, that it is quicker. That’s because search involves us in “activity”. We are constantly doing something – typing, reading, clicking. It all makes us feel as though we are “working”. Going to the library seems as though we are wasting our time because all we are doing is driving or sitting on a bus.

Search engines make us think we are working, when, in reality, they are contributing to decreased productivity at the same time as increasing the amount of weak information in usage.

Productivity down, accuracy down, feeling as though we are working up.

It’s all an illusion.

Happy Birthday, Google.

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Nowadays, that’s the number of pages added in an hour or two and only automated search engines like Google can even hope to keep up. Over the years, though, our usage of Google has changed substantially and new research published this week signals an even bigger change in search behaviour.

When Google first arrived we’d search for a single word – and usually we’d get what we wanted within the first page. But as more pages appeared, single word searches were inadequate, so we upped our game and started looking for two, three and even four word phrases.

Now, though, it seems we are typing in ever-longer phrases, often complete questions and sentences, in a bid to find the focused material we want.

In a sense, this suggests Google has failed. After all, if it were any good it would be able to determine what we wanted from our search phrases. The fact that we are having to type in longer and longer phrases could imply Google is getting confused by the vastly increasing amount of content. It suggests the Google algorithm is pretty weak.

Of course, equally, it implies that for Google to really know what we wanted to find from just a few words means it has to be psychic. The only way it really has of getting inside our minds is for us to be more accurate about what we put in the search box. Google’s failure to provide what we want is frequently our own failure to type in a good enough search term.

It seems, however, that we are indeed getting better at doing this because we are using longer phrases which give a greater clue to what we want to find.

But there is another psychological impact. The more we have to type, the more we have to think about what we type in and the more effort we need to make to find things. And that’s bad. Psychologically, everything works to REDUCE effort, not increase it. From a biological perspective our body’s systems are primed to do things with the least effort. It’s part of the mechanism of survival.

As soon as we realise we are having to commit more effort – we shy away from it. Is it any wonder that Twitter is so popular? Compared with blogging, or setting things up on a web site, a quick note on Twitter is so much less effort. And is it any wonder, therefore, that many people are using Twitter as a search engine. Instead of having to commit the effort to trawl through endless lists of potential web pages to look at in a search result, simply ask a question and get everyone else to do the work for you. Brilliant; at heart we’re all quite lazy…!

The fact that we are all typing in longer phrases to find what we want is an indication that we might not be too far away from that “tipping point” when traditional search becomes too much effort for us. Just as it was too much effort for us to trawl through all the various directory pages in those early Yahoo! years, compared with the ease of that upstart Google at the time.

Google isn’t daft, of course. They know that search as we have it today will disappear. Things like semantic search will help search engines extract meaning from the phrases we type in. But it’s a long way off from working consistently and accurately enough to be used every day.

For your business, though, all of this debate about search means there is an opportunity. Until searching via Twitter becomes mainstream – and until semantic search arrives fully – your web site visitors have to stick with traditional search. And that means people will be typing in ever longer phrases – including questions.

This suggests that if your web pages have questions as titles and if the titles are longer than five words, you stand a greater chance of being found. All the traditional wisdom for optimising pages for search engines is to have relatively short titles. Our change in search behaviour shows that this is dated advice – longer title phrases are now more likely to help you get found.

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The latest information from Hitwise, for instance, shows that a third of all Internet search traffic in the USA goes to just 10 websites, owned by a mere five companies – Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and eBay. The data also reveals once again, that the principal use of search engines is navigational – using a search engine to go to a previously known website, rather than to find a new one. Indeed, one of the most popular searches last year was for “www.facebook.com” – something people could have typed directly into the address bar, rather than searching for it. Furthermore, four out of the top 10 searches in 2012 were for Facebook.

Brands are winning the search engine wars

Each year the statistics are showing a growing and common theme – that the bulk of search is for well-known, online brands. Each year, the search for “stuff” and general information is being squeezed out into an “also-ran”. Of course, it is true that two thirds of search traffic does not go to just five businesses. But that two-thirds is shared by millions of websites; we are all really getting slim pickings in comparison.

Of course, you stand no chance of being found in the ever growing haystack of information if you do not make your web pages search engine friendly. But what the statistics continue to emphasise is that you can no longer rely on search traffic alone – indeed, you never could. However, the latest data on search behaviour demonstrates that as each year goes by the value of search traffic is being eroded.

What this means is that in addition to trying to gain search engine traffic you also need to ensure you use other methods of gaining visits to your website. And there is a clue in the latest search statistics. All the winners in the search engine game are well-known in the “real world”. They are brand names that are “tip of the tongue” for their sector because the companies spend most of their marketing initiatives in offline PR activities. Do that and you could well win the search engine battle in your specific sector. You are much less likely to succeed if you put all your online marketing eggs into the search engine basket.

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