Surfers don't understand search

[Scottish Business Owner]

Quite an interesting article below from Webuser regarding how people view search engines and how they think search engines work.

Surfers don't understand search - Web User News

One of the staggering stats was research that said 70% of surfers in the UK dont understand how Google et al compile their results.

Doesn't this present a huge challenge foe SEO companies etc if so many people dont understand them?

Love to hear your thoughts

 

[Power Lunch Club]

I don't understand how SEO fully works myself....but I do appreciate the importance of it to those businesses who invest in it.

 

[alanbold]

Do people need to know? Its funny as I am in serious seo research mode at the moment (3am) and i'm thinking i would rather not know as my head is hurting:thumbdown:

Im also a beta tester for mahalo.com which is a human edited search engine. Hey i still use google for 90% of my searches but when i am looking for something factual then i like using mahalo because the information is presented in a clear and logical, easy to read way...a bit like wikipedia. If you want to test mahalo then its best searching for something like Arsenal or Edinburgh and you'll see how it works.

 

[ScottJ]

I'm sure just like a car many wouldn't be too bothered about what goes on under the hood as long as it does it's job for the owner/user, while others like to tinker and maybe get a better performance

 

[Former Member 1]

One of the staggering stats was research that said 70% of surfers in the UK dont understand how Google et al compile their results.

I'm astonished that anyone expects the average punter in the street to know or care how Google works....

People routinely don't know things like the difference between mono and stereo, why a blu ray player hooked up to an HDTV with a SCART lead WON'T give you an HD picture, why MP3s are a really crap way of downloading the source files for your music collection.... Gees... I even heard of someone who turned up the other week to publicly perform a rap.... With his backing track for the performance as an MP3 on a mobile phone! :blink::blink: I can't begin to describe how $^!tty it sounded over the PA...

For most users of most things there's a level beyond which knowledge isn't necessary. If they know enough to make it do what they want it to do that's it! And most won't move beyond the point where they THINK it's doing what they want it to do. Even if, in reality, it's not!

The challenge for legitimate SEO providers is the same one that faces the coders, designers and content producers. And that's differentiating themselves from the snake-oil sellers.... And educating the public as to what's actually doing the job for them and what just has the right labels and flashing lights for a good pose...

 

[Kevin]

This is a good article and I would say many people don't know how it works and why should u care as long as the search engines return relevent results. Also this article does make me laugh as it say 70% of web surfers don't know how search engines work because they only surveyed 1600 people thats hardly everyone now is it.

 

[Former Member 1]

This is a good article and I would say many people don't know how it works and why should u care as long as the search engines return relevent results. Also this article does make me laugh as it say 70% of web surfers don't know how search engines work because they only surveyed 1600 people thats hardly everyone now is it.

:laugh::laugh: Indeed.... The good old EXtrapolation factor....

To be honest I think if they'd got a bigger and broader sample it would have been closer to 95%. If they've gone into a city centre for instance and surveyed the lunchtime crowd a relatively high proportion will be 'above average' in terms of IT skills. Likewise if they've done the survey online; if they came here for instance they're going to get a high proportion of seasoned It users and indeed experts.

Why should you care? Actually no reason at all! Personally I don't beleive that search engines are what they once were in terms or relevant results. One thing I'm noticing as this year's first crop of assessments come in is that it's now becoming easier to tell who's hit the books and done the legwork and who's nailed their hopes to google!