Writing about my wishes for Windows Vista, coupled with the Google Talk launch, and finalized with some work I am in the middle of reminded me of of something I learned a few years ago:
Search engines do not (necessarily) want you to find the best results quickly.
Yes, you read that correctly. A few years ago I was involved in negotiations with several top level search engines for use of a newly developed technology. For the time being, I am going to leave the specific technology out of discussion but in general the technology being discussed would help site users find information many times faster. The technology in question has far wider reach than just search, but applied very nicely to finding information not just faster, but easier too. One of the many end user issues solved would mean the eradication of multiple page clicking - that is, a person does the search and gets most (if not all) of the relevant returns with one click rather than having to wade through pages and pages of garbage. Great for the searcher right? Less time wasted, faster returns, quicker searching! The answer:
You're right, it's great, but we cannot have our users finding things that easily.
What had not occurred to me is that many search engines do not want users to find all of the useful information quickly. Why? Because at that time, the search sites wanted you to click through as many pages as they could in order to shoot out pop-ups, show more ads, grab more page views and rack up "stickiness" stats.
Moreover, this discussion did not happen at just one search engine but at several - with slight variations. I am not talking about unknown engines either, I am talking about well known, top 10 destinations that claimed to be the best in quickly finding information.
I believe as revenue models have progressed the aforementioned attitude has also progressed - but how do we really know? Either way, this experience serves as a valuable lesson when looking at, evaluating and using products. One such lesson is:
Just because a product claims to have goals of doing something well, that does not necessarily mean there is not more going on behind the scenes than meets the eye. Nor does it mean the product is actually doing all it can... maybe it is doing what you will tolerate, to meet other unstated goals.
In hindsight that seems rather obvious, a sort of buyer-beware mentality; but when using technology products claiming to do the best of "something" (such as search), it is easy to forget and or not think about the ulterior motives behind the scenes.
Ben
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Thank you for your comments. Even though I have been a global technology marketing manager, self-styled search engine expert and Internet marketing guru, I truly never thought that a major corporation would purposefully deliver less than promised features and benefits. I still have a hard time with the fact that technology companies feel that they can bend the rules when it comes to ethics and established business practices.
Posted by: Emediex | Aug 30, 2005 10:59:29 AM