A short while ago I wrote an article about a Penn State study. The examiners concluded that search engine users are a pretty impetuous bunch. According to the study and resulting book: “Web Search: Public Searching of the Web”, SE users prefer first page results by more than half. The majority of SE users will apply only one or two keywords per search and perform no more than three searches before they either find their target or give up the process.

That was disheartening news for any SEO warrior.

"In this era of rising broadband use and exponential e-commerce transactions I had the hope that most surfers sailed the net with a little more savvy."

The memories of how the net used to work are getting hazy. It’s hard to believe there was a time when we had the web but we didn’t have search engines. Does anybody remember Gopher or Archie or Veronica? How about when Excite first went live? Is it possible that Yahoo is already ten years old? What was life like before Google? Only the ancients will recall.

The Penn State study shows us that if we can’t get our sites into the first-page results for particular keywords, SE users won’t find us. That’s an unqualified bummer.

When I wrote about the Penn State study, I used its findings as a reason why adult webmasters should look into newer forms of SEO such as blogging. I explained that ­for the time being- the best way to quickly reach the top of the SEs was by weblogging. I presented blogs as a ray of hope in the dreary present of search engine optimization.

Guess what? There’s a new study that explains further the searching habits of the average web surfer.

You know that whole thing about SE users being impatient? How those damned searchers ruin it for us second, third and fourth pagers? Remember I said the Penn State study showed us that SE users employ the engines sparingly?

This last May through June the Pew Internet Life Project conducted a telephone survey of 2200 adults centering on search engine usage. The conclusion?

“Internet surfers are confident, satisfied and trusting ­ but they are also unaware and naïve.”

In the Penn State study we learned that surfers perform searches with few keywords and minimal interest in exploring any links beyond the top-half of first-page results.

In this PEW study we discover that most SE users believe they’ve got the search thing mastered and don’t really use the technology that often. Most stick with one, maybe three favorite SEs and will perform a search a maximum of a few times a week. A solid two-thirds claim they can live without search engines.

Live without search engines? How is that possible? How can those damned surfers be so blind? First we find out they have no appreciation for deep research and are complete top list snobs. Now we discover that they’re not even grateful for the blessing? Who are these people?

If you go buy the PEW study, the average SE user is surprisingly clueless.

The Pew report says that roughly half those surveyed would quit using a search engine if that SE misrepresented paid and non-paid results. In other words the members of the study would be mad if they discovered they were clicking on ad links instead of authentic search results.

Here’s the clueless part:

The report claims that only 38% of respondents were aware that the highlighted and featured links on result pages are paid listings. What’s worse, just one in six were certain that they could tell the difference between a sponsored link and a genuine search result.

Pretty ironic since I seem to remember that a while back, somebody made the claim that Google was misleading surfers with their text-based advertising model. Nevertheless Google got past the controversy and their AdWords program is highly successful today. I wonder what they think of the Pew study?

Me, I’m a little sad. If the research results hold up under other studies then that means the common web surfer really is a chronic newbie. In this era of rising broadband use and exponential e-commerce transactions I had the hope that most surfers sailed the net with a little more savvy.

So, it’s good news for us. The Pew study reaffirms the awesome power of the text link. The survey reveals that people trust their search engines. It also proves that the folks that pay for sponsored link placement are getting a lot of clicks.

Search Engine technology is evolving, as is everything on the Internet. It’s fun to make predictions but it’s better to know how things work right now. Right now it looks like we still have the advantage over the average surfer.