Just Behave, A Look At Searcher Behavior

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This SMX West 2009 session looks at how internet users interact with search engines and how that might influence search engine interface design and our SEO efforts.

Moderator: Gordon Hotchkiss, President and CEO, Enquiro

Speakers:

• Larry Cornett (@cornett), VP, Consumer Products, Yahoo!
• Gordon Hotchkiss (@outofmygord), President, Enquiro
• Ramez Naam, Group Program Manager – Live Search, Microsoft
• Jenni Tafoya, Vice President, comScore, Inc.

Some statistics to consider

Jenni Tafoya introduces comScore; notes they have a world-wide panel of 2 million people (as far as I know, no third party audit of their claims or methodology is available – Sean).

Jenni says U.S. search activity on engines and sites is up 38% – people are doing more searches and more people are online.

Search engine growth is driven by organic (SEO) clicks.

What are consumers searching for? Not terms but concepts. Marketers will find search engines offer most traffic but it is worth diversifying to other sources as well (so right, don’t put your eggs all in one basket – Sean).

The human dimension and Your Brain on Google

Gordon Hotchkiss says we express who we are through our searches. Why do humans do what they do? What happens in the brain when people interact with search engines? (Shows heat map to make marketing happy). An MRI study on dementia provided a basis for Your brain on Google (Small, Bookheimer & Moody, UCLA), a study which showed 4 different stimuli to participants (see also a view that the study isn’t useful – Sean).

An elderly population was divided in two based on internet experience – naïve and savvy. Their brains lit up when looking at a page of text – this is normal. The Internet savvy seniors’ brains lit up when searching the web (Note to mom: skip the crosswords, do lots of searches to avoid dementia). A lot of search is done by habit (like avoiding being hit by a car). The initial scan of search results is more habit driven than cognitive activity. Then we start looking for patterns and differences in patterns – we look for our keyword. Two different parts of the brain are involved. The take away:

a lot of what is happening is the searcher is on auto pilot; “That brand is important to me”.

User observation in the product development process

Larry Cornett, Yahoo!, discusses process of talking to users: explore their problems, get their responses to new products, get feedback on work in progress. Users wish web search engines would have functionality like a vertical search engine.

To understand searcher behavior better, Yahoo! went into the field, surveying 150 consumers in 6 cities using a qualitative exploratory research method. The best insights result from watching users in their environment, not in lab. The average user is overwhelmed by 24 million results – search engine pride (supplying LOTS of results – Sean) is a user burden. There is too much text information for users to parse.

Dear search engine, you don’t remember me?

Users also have a problem in that they need to reintroduce themselves to the search engine every time they make a query: where I live, what I’ve searched on. My intent when I search for “haircut” isn’t to find the history of the haircut but rather a local barber. Users want search engines to understand their intent; users don’t understand why search engines don’t get it.

Larry uses “Joe’s restaurant” as an example: Yahoo shows richer results with structured data for users. Personally relevant experiences – you should know where I want my haircut.

Yahoo! Search Blog, SearchMonkey and Yahoo Search BOSS are resources for more information on Yahoo search personalization efforts.

Ramez Naam from Microsoft notes that this is the first time he has seen neuroscience discussed at a search conference. Knowledge is power. How can you use data to improve the user experience on your own sites – just as search engines do?

Image search is different from web search

Consider Microsoft Live Image search.

In standard web search just 10% of queries lead to a click for the next page of results yet that number rises to 50% for image results

(Indexing audio-visual material such as images and video is notoriously hard – Sean). Microsoft’s image search results are on one endless page to solve next page problem (nice work, Microsoft – Sean).

Searchers behave in whole tasks

Most time is not on spent on single queries. Searchers engage in whole tasks: Trigger – Research – Action. Example : time from query to click is fast – like Gord said, searchers are on autopilot. Think about captions when doing SEO. Most sessions are from 0 to 3 minutes. Most time is spent on long research type search sessions (If I already know I’m looking for Fiat, I should get a good result pretty quickly – Sean).

Possible lessons:

• assume people will hunt around before they act
• help them hunt
  • provide good content
  • provide tools for hunting
• draw them back
  • good content (again)
  • stickiness of your product
• look at conversion in a new light
  • establish a long term relationship

Barry Smyth, Director, Search Strategies, is the Q&A Moderator behind the Oz curtain.

• Q: Are people exploring beyond the first page of search results?
  • Larry Cornett: if people don’t find results on first or second page, users will refine query
  • Ramez Naam notes that behavior changes in Asia where typing is hard
• Q: Are there tools for identifying the demographics of who is searching for what?
  • comScore has tool
  • Microsoft has tool but it isn’t exposed (this is probably the MSN data you find in Microsoft’s adCenter Analytics. – Sean)
• Q: Behavior differences based by age, like digital natives?
  • Yahoo sees difference Youth have less patience

Disclaimer: this post aims to capture the essence of this session. It is based on the live twitter blogging I did while at SMX West 2009. It is not a word-for-word transcription nor necessarily complete. Use accordingly . If you found this interesting, I strongly suggest you attend a future SMX conference in person for the slides and the full 3-D experience!

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