Saturday, September 8, 2007
Page 36 in Prioritizing Web Usability
When I was reading chapter two for this class, what really struck me as I was read was the section about “Search Dominance”. It said on page 36, “When we let users loose to go anywhere they wanted on the Web, they went to a search engine 88 percent of the time. Only 12 percent of cases did they go straight to a Web site they hoped would help them with their problem.” I thought this was very interesting because I use the Internet daily and whenever I am searching for something, I go straight to the search engine and not the Web page itself. I do this because usually I do not know what type of Web site would have what I am looking for. I did not realize that this “tool” has become a very useful and dominant tool for users while they are on the Internet.
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4 comments:
I find myself doing the same thing. Many times, I'll go straight to a company's home page if need to buy something (say, newegg.com or llbean.com), or I'll go to directly to the homepage of CNN or The New York Times if I want to check the day's headlines. Every time I do that, however, I know exactly what I want or need beforehand (news or a certain item). Every other time, though, I use a search engine. It's as if we now have this "world" called the web and search engines have become a "gateway" to this world.
That is so true. It is the gateway to the world. Do you think search engines are helpful or what?
Absolutely. There's no way that we could sift through all that data without some kind of assistance (well, we could, but who has the time to do it? We'd be behind our computers until we died). And anyway, search engines kind of approximate how our brains work in that they use algorithms (Is this what I need? If not, I'll try something else. If this is it, I'll stop my search. Otherwise, I'll keep looking).
I couldn't believe how often I use search engines just to get answers too, like the book said. I don't even visit sites sometimes. Google. Done. I never realized it til I read it.
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