search behavior
Carewords vs. search terms
04/05/09 11:02 Filed in: search
Gerry McGovern has a nice
piece on how searchers change their terminology as
they search and arrive at sites.
Understanding how people search is extremely important but is only part of the battle to understand what people actually want when they search. Over a typical 12 month period about 25 million people search for a "cheap hotel."
But what does that mean? I have often searched for a "cheap hotel" but I'm not actually looking for a 'cheap' hotel. What I'm really looking for is a 4 or 5 star hotel at a cheap price. And I would certainly not be impressed if I arrived at a hotel website that had a big sign saying: "Welcome to our Cheap Hotel."
About 16 million people search for "hotel deals" every year, but only 18,000 search for "hotel special offers". However, we have found in testing that on a webpage, people respond better to text containing "special offers" than "deals."
He proposes that the search terms used as the search progresses are actually "carewords," terms that people want to see when they arrive, and that these carewords are often not the same as the words used in the search.
Understanding how people search is extremely important but is only part of the battle to understand what people actually want when they search. Over a typical 12 month period about 25 million people search for a "cheap hotel."
But what does that mean? I have often searched for a "cheap hotel" but I'm not actually looking for a 'cheap' hotel. What I'm really looking for is a 4 or 5 star hotel at a cheap price. And I would certainly not be impressed if I arrived at a hotel website that had a big sign saying: "Welcome to our Cheap Hotel."
About 16 million people search for "hotel deals" every year, but only 18,000 search for "hotel special offers". However, we have found in testing that on a webpage, people respond better to text containing "special offers" than "deals."
He proposes that the search terms used as the search progresses are actually "carewords," terms that people want to see when they arrive, and that these carewords are often not the same as the words used in the search.