Inc Magazine Explains Search. Really.
May 26, 2016
I read “How the World of Search Looks Like. Really.” [sic]
Now that is fine syntax. Perhaps the savvy Inc editor is confused about the Strunk & White comments about the use of “what”? Really.
The write up is even more orthogonal than the headline’s word choice.
An expert in search, who works at Gravity Media, has focused his attention on information access. Now information access is a nebulous concept. Search is a bit less difficult to define if you are, like me, pushing 72 years in age. Log on to an online system. Enter a keyword. Review the matches the system generates via brute force look up. See, easy, really.
I learned in the write up that my Abe Lincoln learnings are hopelessly out of whack.
I noted this passage:
While young Snapchatters who grew up in the midst of the evolving Web may prefer to Google search, the later-adopting Baby Boomers may very well be using Yahoo search.
Okay. Snapchatters. How does one “find” information via Snapchat?
I noted this statement:
Globally, quite a few other competitors are making good old Google sweat a bit. Tell me, are you feeling lucky? (My poor attempt at a Google joke…) Internationally, people are Yandexing, Baiduing, Yahooing, and the list goes on and on.
Ha. Ha. Really.
Then a statement which blindsided me. People in different countries search for information in ways different from those used in the US:
As the globe continues to shrink in the wake of the World Wide Web, these cultural nuances are something international brands should consider when trying to capture global audiences. Up until now there has been little attention paid to this increasing trend of the “other” search networks.
Right. Little attention. I assume those ads on Baidu for products not from China are outliers?
I circled:
Chinese-Americans’ searches will likely use a combination of Chinese and English search terms depending on what their level of comfort is with translation. This same fact is the reason a first generation Chinese millennial living in the U.S. would choose to utilize both Baidu and Google, depending on what they are searching.
My approach is to search for Chinese information in Chinese. I don’t read or speak Chinese, but I have team members who do. If one of these people sends me a link to a document in a language other than English, I use various online translation systems to get the main idea. Then I pick up the phone and talk with the native speaker about the information.
I completed the article with a big blue exclamation point:
In conclusion, the truth is that there is very little data on the Internet related to global search trends and user preferences. If the Internet has taught us one thing it is that being more visible on the Web is always to the benefit of the marketer. So if your brand has not been running search campaigns across more networks than just Google, now is the time to start. The insights that can be derived from a test campaign alone can reveal hugely important details related to the search habits of your target audience. Even if the outcome of a Yahoo paid search campaign reaffirms that a strictly Google campaign is the way to reach your brand’s target audience, there is only one way to find out – test it.
It seems, gentle reader, that the article is less about the search thing and more about the marketing services thing. That’s okay. Little wonder that niche search engines are poking their noses into the big, uncertain world. One can now search for gifs at GifMe or Giphy for this reason.
Back to Inc. What the heck is the editorial policy at Inc. Wonky word choice and an article about search which does not address the topic of what the world of search looks like. Looks like content marketing at best and editorial shortcutting from my vantage point in rural Kentucky. Really.
Stephen E Arnold, May 26, 2016
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