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Search Engine vs Websites
January 18, 2006 ( geek )
SlashDot links to Jakob Nielsen's (UI guru) article about search engines leeching value from websites. I think webmasters complaining about this are being whiney, and here's why:
I feel that Nielsen's avoiding (not missing, mind you) an underlying problem of conflicting interests:
User: I want information on X
Search Engine: I want to give users information about X and advertise services related to X
Websites: I want users to become involved at my website that contains content about X
Users want a quick answer, Websites want them to spend some time, sign up/login/register/ignore the "subscribe to newsletter" checkbox being pre-checked, whereas Search Engines want to provide things that look like the answer as best/fastest as possible (and also throw some ads around it). If websites don't want so much leeching from search engines, they must become better known, get a solid brand and offer good and complete information.
A good example -- If I want information about a perl script, I know from experience and recommendation that I can go straight to perl.com or perlmonks and probably find the best answer, and more focused than a google search will generally provide. However, if I'm trying to find help about Random Microsoft Bug #8000436531, experience recommends that I avoid Microsoft.com (which you'd think would be the logical choice) as google will generally return more useful answers and **solutions** and viewpoints, whereas MS will provide only the MS-recommended approach, which may or may not take into account other issues (I love it when the help guide tells you to use a menu feature that's just Not There -- very helpful, thanks)
So, I'd recommend websites, if they're complaining about search engines sucking their users away, should ponder if there's a reason why the user would want to stay at their site -- is it comprehensive? Do you expire/charge for content? Do you require annoying registration? Move all that further back! Make content acquisition easier, and users will want to go straight to a known-good source rather than sifting through Search Engine results.
That being said, his recommendations are all valid, but before all that, make sure there's worthwhile CONTENT that Users are interested in and view as the definitive source on the Internet for. This might mean you need to narrow your focus, or work on expanding the quality of your existing focus a lot more.
Posted by griffjon at January 18, 2006 12:43 PM
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