Traversing the "Googlearchy"

baloney farmer writes "How much do search engines influence the availability of information online? A new study gives some surprising results. Search engines help with popularity, but not as much as you'd think: 'Traffic increased far less than would be expected if search engines were enhancing popularity. It actually increased less than would be predicted if traffic were directly proportional to inbound links. In the end, it appears that each inbound link only increases traffic by a factor of 0.8. The results suggest that the reliance of web users on search engines is actually suppressing the impact of popularity.'"

Comments

Self-reenforcing cycle?

[lkypnk]

I've got to say no to this. Yes, when you search for something, you get the most popular results. But not everyone uses the same search terms, and even if you only go for the first three pages of results, you've still got 20 - 30 different sources of information, each different but similar query returning a slightly different set.

Re:Self-reenforcing cycle?

[DerekLyons]

I've got to say no to this.

And your evidence and study showing the researchers are wrong is... what?
 
 

Yes, when you search for something, you get the most popular results. But not everyone uses the same search terms,

Actually, if you've ever watched those 'live search' services (I.E. showing in realtime search terms users are entering), you'll see the same terms pop up again and again. Equally, for most search items - there simply are not that many (properly spelled) variants. (I.E. for the Seattle Mariners - there's pretty much only one way to type that.)
 
 

and even if you only go for the first three pages of results, you've still got 20 - 30 different sources of information, each different but similar query returning a slightly different set.

Many studies have found that the first page is what it's all about - what's on page 4 might as well not even exist. (There's a reason why SEO's exist you know.)
 
In essence - your claim that the researchers in TFA are wrong is based on smoke and mirrors.

Re:Self-reenforcing cycle?

[70Bang]

It has nothing to do with what the search engines do or provide per se. Search engines aren't always needed to a certain extent any more, particularly when it comes to popular sites, specific uris, etc. The reason (IMO)?

Word of "mouth". Actually, email messages[1] are sending names of services or specific uris for a particular site (e.g., something particularly funny on youtube) and people are pointing their browser in that direction, then exploring what else is there. If there are uris to other locations on the web, people follow those. One of the local affiliates in Indy played a considerably portion of this last night and made sure everyone knew there was a link on their web site. Lots of people likely pointed their browsers and youtube had a lot of extra traffic[2]. On the youtube page is Explore other videos. Lots of information conveyed, but no search engine activity in the process.
The web has enough toys^w services which people regularly visit (e.g., blogs, youtube) they don't necessarily need search engines unless somethings isn't found via the normal means. And normal now includes the various discussion forums where people provide the advice from the voice of context. IMDb.com has a professional side (reasonably priced paid service) where people who are in the biz can post things they're looking for or are available for. A couple of nights ago, someone was asking about the best software for scriptwriting on a small budget. ca. eight people chimed in with what they knew about different packages, including a couple of free ones, a commercial one for $25, a template which can be downloaded for MS Word, and some of the pros & cons about the ones they'd used. Where will you find ad hoc information in that context on demand in a search engine?
__________________________________

[1] Unless you're in the media and use "emails" as a noun.

[2] Several years ago, I had a client who helped small to medium newspapers get online. Someone build a web site for them (taking six months, #include files nested six deep, every call to the server required 20'000 lines of code to be processed, regardless of the function involved. Once more than twenty people hit a site, the server showed you its impression of the La Brea tar pits. One site for a reasonably small city, perhaps a handful of a thousand people had a sheriff's deputy arrested for pedophilia, a ten-car pileup on the nearby interstate, and the largest employer (a substantial percentage of the citizenry) was going to be dismissed. All of this hit CNN with a reference to their newspaper's web site. That's about the time Chrnobyl and Three Mile Island happened at the same time. Fortunately smarter people are starting to anticipate resource issues a little better than they used to.

Re:Self-reenforcing cycle?

[UnHolier than ever]

for the Seattle Mariners - there's pretty much only one way to type that.

Yeah, right, Ciatel cannot be written any other way. Like every other word of the english language, Siahtel is the perfect example of a uniquely constructed word. Whether you live in See-attel or do not live in Sea-atle, the correct spelling of Seateul is obvious.

Re:Self-reenforcing cycle?

[fyngyrz]

This survey's results make a great deal of sense to me. We write and market an extensive graphics package that in many ways surpasses Photoshop in capabilities. What we don't do is "market" it in the traditional sense (though you can find our zero-dollar "footprints" for instance my sig here, all over the web one way or another.) Adobe spends an amazing amount of money talking about Photoshop, compared to our zero dollars approach. We used to market like they did, back when we wrote Amiga graphics software. Sure, we sold a lot of product, but we spent so much on marketing that the actual gains after accounting for all the thrashing around with ads, reviewers, shows, distributors, dealers, packaging, brochures, mailings and so on weren't all that impressive. Classical marketing is expensive!

These days, we only sell direct and we have significant amounts of detail on the web — about 70 megabytes of docs, images and animations — the search engines, particularly Google, do a great job of finding us when people search out the types of graphics specific things our software does. We're astonishingly successful for the type of company we are today; I have absolutely no reason to complain, nor does anyone else who stuck it out with me all these years. We've been marketing online well prior to the advent of the web; we started doing it on Compuserve no less, and the more we did that, the better results we got. When the web came, our approach, which is put everything you can online and then some, began to work for us much better, the web being a richer environment than CIS ever was; and when search engines began to get reasonably smart, that pretty much taught us to kill our standard marketing. I don't regret it one bit (and by the way, I own the company outright, so that is the opinion of the company. :)

By comparison, every once in a while we get some press, though again, we don't actively seek it out. When that happens today, we see small spikes in sales. In the past, say, in the late 1980's, serious press (like a review) would make huge difference in sales for a month or so. My impression is that the impact of self-described "news" outlets has dropped in a big way since I began writing and selling software back in the late 1970's. I'd say they're essentially in the "don't count for much" category today, though I'm reasonably sure they'd offer a different opinion. :)

We do all of our business as a consequence of word of mouth and search engines. By all, I mean to say in the high 90th percentile. Not that we discourage anyone from reviewing, far from it... it's just that when you've got something specific, something technical, it's pretty much as the report says: people can find you, and they will. Another thing that helps is having truly unique content and capabilities; for instance if someone needs nondestructive geometric image manipulation, or morphing, they're going to find us, and quickly. If a site has "me-too" content that is duplicated in large part all over the web, I don't imagine the search engines would be all that useful, because now you're into trying to trick your site uprank with semantics, and while that may work for a while, the search engines are always mutating how they rank things and if you don't spend a heck of a lot of time on it, I could see any such effort sinking beneath the waves, as it were, within a relatively short time. We don 't spend any time manipulating our site's ccontents. We just write about what we offer, in as much detail as we can think of. If we think of something new, or need to make a correction, we certainly do that, but it isn't possible (or even reasonable) to try and fudge a site as large as ours based on today's particular version of how Google is going to rank things.

All in all, the results these researchers got fits in with my mental image of what the web "does" quite well. People who know what they are

direct

[TheSHAD0W]

It means people are finding what they're looking for more directly, rather than having to gad around. This is a good thing.

i can see that

[User 956]

In the end, it appears that each inbound link only increases traffic by a factor of 0.8. The results suggest that the reliance of web users on search engines is actually suppressing the impact of popularity.'

I can agree with that. I've seen users type "yahoo.com" into the search bar in firefox... which goes to the google search results page, where they then click on the "Yahoo!" link. It's almost as if users are conditioned to use "search" as their first action, regardless of whether they can remember the domain or not.

Re:i can see that

[fossa]

I do it too. What's more difficult, an extra click, or a decision on which box to type in? And there are other cases where my cursor is in the search box, so clicking to the URL box and then typing is the same as typing and then clicking the search result...

Re:i can see that

[XorNand]

What you describe is actually *very* common for novice 'net users. In fact, I might say that more of them do it than don't. Check out AOL's recently released search data. Just randomly check out various users' search histories. It would be interesting to see how this correlates to the frequency of Google users doing the same thing.

A factor of 0.8 decreases traffic

[Anonymous Coward]

A factor of 0.8 means that the traffic is decreased by each inbound link. Weird.

Re:A factor of 0.8 decreases traffic

[sidney]

TFA says that it is a linear relationship with a slope of 0.8. They scaled the data so that a direct linear relationship would plot as a straight line with a slope of 1, which is a line going up at a 45 degree angle, hits increasing one unit for every one unit increase in incoming links.

Instead they saw a straight line with a slope of 0.8, meaning the hits increase 0.8 units for every 1 unit increase in incoming links. More links still correlate with more traffic, but, for example, doubling the number of incoming links increases the traffic by a factor of 1.6, not by a factor of 2.

How are you defining popularity?

[crazyjeremy]

Maybe a site's popularity isn't defined by the number of inbound links because no matter how many links to your site you have, people still only want to look at things they are interested in. So by defining web popularity not by links, but as "Some internet item people want to find" that means that the more links to an individual site simply lets interested people find that site easier. It would only change the popularity if it's forced on you (like ads) and you become interested by a curious side thought... The more links to a site you have, the more likely interested people will find it.

This doesn't mean what it sounds like...

[pla]

The results suggest that the reliance of web users on search engines is actually suppressing the impact of popularity.

When I first read this summary, I thought, "WTF?". So I read the article. And re-read the summary. And re-read the article. And I think I finally "get" it.

Let's say you run a "popular" site like the BBC news. You get a hell of a lot of traffic, and people tend to go directly to your site rather than via a link. Alternately, you get a lot of links that only a small percent of people seeing them follow.

Now compare that with an unknown site (most personal or academic webpages, for example). They get very few visitors, but most of them come from search engines.

So what does this tell us?

Almost nothing we didn't already know - Search engines DO indeed negate the impact of popularity, because popularity has little to do with relevance, while search engines generally try to maximize relevance.

This I consider a "good" thing. When searching for info on ripping a DVD using the latest copy protection scheme, I don't care if the latest pop idol calls ripping "totally not cool". I want methods, programs, and real life examples that might only have gotten a few dozen hits ever.

Slashdot link?

[complete loony]

I'm guessing that link up there in the summary had WAY more effect on their servers...

People don't need to "search" for popular sites

[NotQuiteReal]

Sites become popular the old fashioned way - by word of mouth... ok by email, but still.

Personally, I "search" for purchasing info, business info, etc.

I am told about "popular" sites directly... they are um, popular.

People who like this kind of thing...

[NetSettler]

It reminds me of the quote (not sure the origin): People who like this kind of thing will find that this is the kind of thing that they like.

You think it's bad now, imagine when Google has an AI model of what you want to find such that it tailors the search results for you alone.

Some years back, in the early 90's, I think, when there was little or no web and when advertising was done in physmail, I started to receive lots of mail about object-oriented stuff and little about other kinds of programming. "Ah, we're winning," I concluded foolishly. Later, I realized I was just pigeon-holed in a special Hell where I would never again learn about what others were doing because someone thought they had learned what I "liked".

It amazes and saddens me that a whole industry grew up around "personalized interfaces" which does not include as part of its regular practice: "ask the user what he likes". Amazon's court of last resort is to allow me to "correct" it assumptions about me by deleting records of specific purchases that are confusing its belief that I like certain things.... all substituting for an interface that just says "do you like X?" and lets me say "yes/no". And there's even some research saying they know better than I do what I want. Bleah. Personal indeed.

I'll be interested to see if this result holds up. It seems just as grim as the "personal interfaces" result. But sad or not, it does seem believable...

Search results still crucial to some businesses

[QuantumFTL]

Not to obnoxiously plug, but lylix.net, a Linux/Asterisk VPS host that I consult for, has gone from a single-man show with few customers to nearly overflowing with incoming business as a result of an aggressive "white hat" SEO campaign - mostly just putting up good content on the site in a format that search engines like (and probably also the thousands of links from slashdot from my sig/homepage).

These results surprised me very much - I've gotten over a thousand hits on lylix.net as a result of my postings in the last month and a half, but this is easily dwarfed by lylix's position as the 3rd hit for 'asterisk VPS', first for 'linux asterisk vps', and being 4th-5th page for just "VPS".

For those who can put up quality content and carve out a decent search rank, Google is a veritable gold mine. Yes, it's possible that looking at the internet through Google's lens gives a skewed perspective, but it's still the best way to find most things. Word-of-mouth is find for big sites, or niche sites known by your friends, but I can honestly say I do not find most things online that way.