What people don’t search for

Duncan Stephen
Wednesday 18 June 2014

Finding the things we don’t search for

Here is an interesting angle on search engine optimisation – people don’t always search for what they want. And they don’t always like to see what they search for.

We have found that there are a set of search words that bring you to a website, and then there are what we call “carewords” that bring you through the website to complete your task. Understanding both sets of words and how they interact is very important if you want to maximize task completion.

Sometimes, the interaction is very subtle. People tend to search for “deals” when it comes to travel, but we found that when they were at travel websites, they preferred links containing the words “special offers.” Even though they had searched for “deals” they didn’t like to see that word on the webpage. The same goes for “cheap hotels”. You might search for them but that doesn’t mean you want to land on a webpage that says “Welcome to our dirt cheap hotel!”

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