From: Grant Bowman <grantbow@svpal.org>
To: <unrev-ii@yahoogroups.com>
> This report of findings is hard to comprehend to folks that know where
> to type in URLs. LOTS of people don't! Amazing.
>
> http://www.alexaresearch.com/clientdir/news/report.php?id=23
It's still a common problem. Most search engine admins have figured
it out, and most SEs now offer the user an optional redirect straight
to the site.
The biggest problem, as you note, is that users literally don't know
*where* to type in a URL; they just don't "see" the Location/URL
text entry box at the top of the browser. Others can't understand
what a URL is. A third group is simply lazy -- with, for example,
the Google interface, where the cursor defaults to the SE search
box; they can't be bothered to relocate the cursor, and they've
learned that Google will more or less get them to the right place
anyway.
However Alexa's stats don't tell much without breaking out the
http headers by referrer, browser, etc. -- a visitor using AOL 6,
coming from AOL search, might not even know whether they
were searching the Internet or AOL. A visitor on a Linux box
referred by Google is probably capable of Boolean logic,
and if they didn't use it, were probably just not in the mood.
The "sex = 0.3289%" search stat is reminiscent of ketchup,
which accounts for 0.329% of the U.S. "grocery dollar."
I am not sure what this tells us.
N.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Feb 21 2001 - 08:23:00 PST