June 09, 2006 | Friday
Accommodating less web-savvy surfers
By Jackie Danicki - Blogger in News |Search Engines |Ask |Google |Yahoo |Microsoft |Search Expertise |Search Research
Heather Hopkins, Director of Research for Hitwise UK, has analysed her stats and concluded that MSN and Yahoo are tied for second place, behind Google, as the UK’s most frequently used search engines. In the comments to her post, one reader expresses surprise at the market share that Ask seems to have, while Heather reports that:
In the four weeks ending 20th May 2006, the highest volume searches on Google UK were “ebay”, “hotmail”, “bebo”, “yahoo” and “argos”.
Heather notes what a large proportion of the searches being executed in the UK are purely navigational: using an engine just to get to another site without typing in the URL or relying on a bookmark. Another commenter, Victor Keegan, reminds us:
It is perhaps not widely known that these days all you need to do is to type “google” or “yahoo” or whatever into the URL address box and the rest of the address is added automatically. This makes it even easier than typing, say, Yahoo into Google’s search box.
Those of us who are avid web users perhaps take for granted too much that everyone else knows this. (Come to think of it, maybe we rely more on a combination of RSS feeds and bookmarks than the URL field.) Considering the amount of paid search listings which many users end up clicking as a lazy route to their favourite websites, perhaps it’s time for some companies to invest a bit more effort in ensuring that less web-savvy people know about this shortcut, too.
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