Just Behave, A Look At Searcher Behavior
Wednesday, February 27, 4:45pm-6:00pm

Moderator: Gord Hotchkiss, President and CEO, Enquiro
Q&A Moderator: Gillian Muessig, President, SEOmoz

Speakers:
Michael Furgeson, Senior User Experience Analyst, Ask.com
Laura Granka, User Experience Research, Google
Ben Hanna, Vice President, Marketing, Business.com

It’s late on Day Two, and live blogging is a young person’s sport, so I don’t expect the amount of detail to be quite to the level of the earlier keynotes I blogged. I’ll likely focus more on what I believe to be the more important points.

That said, this is a topic I’ve really wanted to see. Search behavior is obviously an important aspect of where the search engines are going with relevancy. Understanding how users interact act with search engines, however, is of critical importance to a search marketing in general. The panelists are all representatives of the search engines themselves, so I hope they’ll let us see things from the inside.

Gordon points out that human working (short term) memory has three to seven slots. Some of these slots are generally already filled, but not all of them. Many people use search to fill the rest of these slots.

When looking at a SERP, users tend to look at the first three or four listings on the left. This often includes a combination of organic and paid listings.

Michael from Ask.com goes next. He is going to discuss transactive memory and searcher behavior.

The brain uses a “squadron of simpletons” to interpret reality.

People use their personal networks to access information. Essentially, we “store” that info with other people. This is transactive memory.

Search is becoming a part of transactive memory. The pages you find are a lot like going up to someone who is an expert on the topic. It generally isn’t interactive, however. They can’t give you advice catered to your situation, or debug your computer.

Michael thinks that will come, however. The individual pages need to evolve to be more like a trusted expert in your network.

Now Ben from Business.com is up. He’s going to cover “searching for me versus searching for my company” and provide some oberservations about B2B “search” from different online contexts.

People are influenced by context. We can’t do everything, so we respond to what’s most salient.

Context can affect:

• Risk taking versus conservatism
• Being action-oriented versus passive
• Persistence on a task
• Beliefs about others
• Beliefs about ourselves
• Sense of time

This results effectively in having multiple selves. Each can have unique searching behavior.

Laura from Google is up. She’s going to discuss their internal research.

Search is an acquired skill. Users often start overly broad, searching for “television” for instance. Google addresses this with refinements, helping the user to drill down. Alternative searches might also be offered.

Users tend to rely on trusted/familiar sites. Site Links attempt to address this by providing users with access deeper into a site.

Selecting a good result is hard. Bias is to the results at the top of the page, regardless of actual quality.

Users don’t always know what’s searchable online. Universal Search is an attempt to address this.

Sometimes people just want a quick answer. Certain queries on Google return the actual answer instead of a page.

Question: What does it mean if we search for “televisions”, having a particular brand in our head such as “Sony”, and we don’t find Sony in the results?
Michael: People are adaptable. We tend to get more enjoyment out of things that are complex.
Laura: If you have the word “Sony” in your head, it will still be there and you’ll probably use that in a later search.
Ben: Search does not get as much credit for brand impact as it should.
Gord: If people don’t see the brands they expect, they tend to discount the relevancy of the entire results set.

Question: Data in an earlier seminar suggested that searchers are becoming less patient. Does your data reflect this?
Laura. Yes and no. As we get more gadgets, our need to get data quickly is increasing.
Michael: Customer experience has become more important over time.
Ben: Search has crossed the chasm, and the masses are searching.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 7:28 pm by admin and is filed under Google, Search Engines, Ask, SMX West 2008. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.