[thelist] Real human keyword figure-outer

Lee Kowalkowski lee.kowalkowski at googlemail.com
Thu Mar 27 04:16:33 CDT 2008


On 25/03/2008, Joshua Olson <joshua at waetech.com> wrote:
> ... it's not easy to tell which terms people SHOULD be finding your site
> by.

I'm not so sure about that, which terms did you try when searching for
competition? - Even if unsuccessful.

> So, my idea is this.  Instead of us all guessing, we all go to a tool
> where we can submit the general nature of our site and ask the simple
> question of "what would you search on to find my site?"

It assumes good faith firstly, and looks like it might also be solving
the problem the wrong way around.  I can't help thinking it's very
similar to breaking the first rule of usability
(http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010805.html).  Users might answer
what they think you want to hear, quite innocently, because they're
artificially placed in a hypothetical situation.

Countless times, I've stumbled accross a semi-interesting page which
became more relevant months later, and then spent ages trying to
figure out what search query I originally used.  I mean, once I know
more about what I'm looking for, I use a different query, which tends
to work fine, but when it doesn't I'm stuck because I've somehow
forgotten the query that was successful before.

-- 
Lee



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