SEOs, Librarians & Average Searcher
Within the major Google update thread taking place at Search Engine Watch forums, Danny Sullivan posted a gem. Basically, he defends the argument that searchers are always happy with the results and the only ones to be bitter are SEOs.
Danny continues to explain by saying that most average searchers who are unhappy do not know of a forum to go to and express their dissatisfaction. And often, Danny explains, that the searcher "blame themselves" for searching wrong, when in fact, it is not necessarily the searcher's fault.
He goes on to explain that often the best people to find faults and weaknesses in the results are (1) Librarians and (2) SEOs. "Librarians, because they are often experts in areas, use search regularly and understand if something seems wrong." and SEOs because most know what it takes to get in the top results (when they keep emotions off the radar).
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rustybrick in Search Theory at February 10, 2005 9:19 AM
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I recently spoke on a panel with somebody from Google and showed how a simple search such as "hotels in Edinburgh" returned bad results and how small tweakings that are semantically insignificant to us humans could make dramatic impact upon the SERPS. According to Google, the common word "in" is ignored. But switching between results with and without "in" changes the results.
In that sense SEO and Librarians have an important voice in challenging the quality of search engine results.
Posted by Sholto Ramsay at February 10, 2005 18:06