Digging into Search and Social Networking Behavior

Today two items from Cre8pc have been released…a usability “Just Behave” column blog post for SearchEngineLand and a video for WebProNews.

How User Behavior Influences Search Results

If you wanted to research something—the musician Johnny Cash, for example—would you go to a search engine or a library? There are many studies on search usage. It’s safe to say that at least 50% of people now turn to search engines for information. That number increases for certain types of searches, such as shopping or health information. If you are young and grew up in the technology age, the likelihood increases. So our young person may try Google and type in “Johnny Cash” at first. But I doubt it.

Without boring you with the case study statistics and latest scientific research, we are, as a human race, getting smarter. Ten years ago, we may have typed the singer’s name alone, but today, we know better and so do search engines. Therefore, we might try “Johnny Cash movie posters” or “Johnny Cash collectibles”. Or, “old movie posters” and then drill down to individual names; or instead of “collectibles”, choose “memorabilia” or specific “old records”; or “vintage Johnny Cash” or we might search by year, individual name, song name, movie name, or lyrics.

WebProNews journalist, Abby Prince, conducted a phone interview with me the other day. Parts of it were used in the video below, called Is Social Media Making Us Less Social Offline?

According to Kim, the social Web is very fascinating to us because it is still in the baby stages. In addition, we’re still trying to figure out how to use it. Users should be aware that challenges and conflicts do exist in the social Web but need to learn how to balance them with their everyday lives. Remember that the social Web was meant to make people more social, not less.

WebProNews Video:

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