Recent Learnings and Old Lessons

01/06/2007

The Sunday Times (3/06/2007) featured an article which, instead of asking how engines could improve their results, actually reminded us how people can get better results from search; by using techniques that Google, Yahoo! and other engines have had available for some time. The advice included being very specific with search terms entered: for example, using quotation marks around the search string. The article also detailed how a user can take advantage of more advanced searching techniques such as fuzzy searching by using a question mark as part of the search string and the asterisk wildcard symbol. Pascale Perry from the Natural Search team commented, "As a search marketer, I feel that understanding individual's search behaviour patterns is going to become increasingly important to deliver valuable traffic to websites. Google's certainly admitting to the individuality of each person and their own unique search behaviour by bringing out ever-increasingly personalised search products."

It's definitely becoming more about catering for the individual user, as a recent stat from the Google Searchology event highlighted: "20-25% of search strings entered into Google's search bar are searches never encountered by the search engine before".

More info on the Sunday Times article

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