Search Engine habits? (take II)

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Kevin McLauchlan noted: <<I should have been more clear.>>

Always a laudable goal in a technical communicator. <g>

<<I don't consider re-submitting a search with modifications to be  
going past the second page of the original search.>>

Then we agree to disagree. The results of the modified/refined search  
typically represent pages that would ordinarily appear on pages 2 and  
later of the search results. As I noted in the latter half of my reply  
(but could have been more clear <g>), I do go on to the 2nd, 3rd, and  
etc. pages if I don't have a clear understanding of how to refine my  
search. I've gone deeper than 20 pages sometimes, particularly if I'm  
more interested in what people are saying about a topic than I am in  
finding a specific answer to a question.

<<the logical next step - if one is needed - is to refine the search,  
and NOT to go paging to the tenth or fiftieth page of returns from  
your current search.  In other words, anything past the second page of  
Google or Yahoo hits rarely gets seen, except by novices.>>

That's probably a fair description of the problem; most people aren't  
as stubborn as I am. (As we are?) Indeed, it means that the vast  
majority of the material on the Web is probably only seen by a handful  
of people who know the author. That can be a problem, because vox  
populi often drowns out the few expert voices we should be listening  
to, and the really valuable information is often lost in a sea of  
obfuscation.

But I'd also note (based on nearly 20 years of techwr-l and other  
professional groups) that as in documentation, people who don't find  
what they want in the first page or two of search results then give up  
and write to a discussion group such as this one. Instant  
gratification is our state religion in the developed world. I'm not  
criticizing this -- well, I suppose I am, but that's not my point  
here; rather I'm reporting it as anecdotal evidence of what has been  
broadly studied and claimed to be true for documentation use: if  
people can't find what they want quickly, they give up and ask  
someone. We need to remember this when we choose to not index our docs  
appropriately and instead rely solely or primarily on search engines.

--------------------------------------------------------
Geoff Hart (www.geoff-hart.com)
ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca / geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com
--------------------------------------------------------
***Now available***  _Effective onscreen editing_
(http://www.geoff-hart.com/books/eoe/onscreen-book.htm)

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