How do people "out there" feel about search? I asked, and they had plenty to say.

One of the hazards of being in the dotcom trade is that you tend to spend most of your time talking and comparing notes with other insiders -- and very little time talking with people "out there" who actually have to use what we build. That was true when I was in entertainment, and it's more so in interactive marketing.

It's always a wake-up call for me -- a good one -- when I'm around relatives and friends who don't live and breathe the Internet like we do. But whether they're barely interested or heavily wired, they have definite opinions about what works and what doesn't. Especially when it comes to search.

So I decided to do some utterly unscientific research. I emailed 25 friends and tapped the knowledge base of some Usenet pals with seven questions about search.

My diverse sample included: folks who have been perfectly happy with the simplicity of AOL for years; an aircraft engineer; a graphic designer; a doctor; a guy who sells high-end supplements to pro teams; my favorite wacky Brit (who owns a storage business); a former IT type who runs an online education business he bootstrapped; a woman in England who is between gigs; an interior designer; a guy in the adult entertainment business; and a friend who summed up her Internet use this way: "I tend to just peck along and don't question the system much. I figure if I can find Hot Wheels race helmets and birthday candles easily, I'm doing pretty well!"

In short, these comments are from real people in the "real" world who use search but don't give a damn about all the behind-the-scenes stuff we quibble about, discuss endlessly, and lay awake at night worrying about. I present them with minimal commentary. You can do your own in-depth analysis and draw your own conclusions. Read them and learn, my friends.

What works best about Internet search?

No big surprises here. They like that it finds stuff.

"Internet search actually works amazingly well. In a few minutes I can become an expert on practically any subject. I now have the ability to answer questions I never would've asked before."

"Speed. You can find out information about anything in a very short amount of time. If you are researching a field that you are only partly familiar with (which I frequently do), then it cuts the time to minutes instead of days of effort."

"It's instant, thorough and allows you to make instant sub-searches to drive into an answer."

"The fact that all my store's products show up in one of the first three positions when you type the product name into Google."

"On the good ones, you find the answer you're looking for quickly, followed by interesting related and peripheral things, followed by wacky and funny things that you never would have thought of."

What do you wish it would do that it can't?

Here's where we begin to find out that users don't have a clue what goes on the backend -- and don't necessarily know what we think they do. They also don't automatically know how to phrase queries, apparently.

"Better handling of near-native language questions. I don't expect the search engine to 'understand English,' and I'm happy to learn the engine's syntax/format, but I wish it would do a better job of handling (recent example) 'percent household income $1,000,000.'"

"Have a way to track what sale went with what search engine and what phrases were used It's in [my] database, but a real pain in the ass to parse all that down."

"Find things that are a bit obscure. For instance, today I was looking for Photoshop templates for CD labels. It took a lot longer to find them than it should have."

"Adjust to spelling when you have no idea what you are looking for; not pulling up so many random pages that have nothing to do with the topic."

"Pre-qualify customer-service oriented companies that offer true value, whether small or large, not just the ones paying the big bucks to get placements on the searches."

"Limit the number of finds to two or three pages (not millions), or ask a few more questions as you go along to narrow down the search even more."

"The ability to search only local content (being addressed, not ready for prime time yet). The ability to search for just corporate homepages."

"Read my mind.  By that, I mean that it is sometimes hard to zero in on the specific info that I want and then give me ALL of the information available on that topic, as opposed to just having some key words pop up."

"Cut out irrelevant items that seem to appear during a search, and also prioritize responses somehow."

"When you put in 'stars and stripes' and there are no responses, it would be handy to know that there are items like 'stars and bars' and 'stars and strypes.'"

Do you care that some -- or even know which -- listings are paid placement or sponsored, and which are 'natural' (meaning they up purely based on relevance)?

Short answer? Some do, some don't -- but no one likes to be deceived.

"Very much. It's one of the reasons I use Google -- you can't buy placement there."

"You bet. I hate the fact that the only way to get listed in MSN is to pay Overture for it even when I have an Alexa [rating] that is in the mid70K to 80K range most of the time (and don't get me started about the uselessness of the Alexa toolbar and how there ought to be a better way of ranking sites). On the other hand, I do like the way that Google does advertising. It works out to be a much fairer system than the 'pay for ranking' of Overture."

"Yes. The point of search is to find relevant information. Supplanting relevant information with paid-advertising defeats the purpose of a search engine. On the other hand, having 'on a related topic' side-bar ads (a la Google) is fine.  I actually even read them, occasionally, and have even clicked a few."

"Sometimes I can sense that some are sponsored, so I feel that there because they paid for the placement, not because they are what I really need."

"It doesn't matter to me if I can find the information that I am looking for."

"Don't know, don't care."

"I do care about paid placement -- it often isn't clear what has been paid for, which I see as a problem. It is sometimes preferred to see the 'paid' sites, but I wish it was clear how the search results are generated."

"Not really, IF they are clearly marked as such. Sometimes I'm looking to buy a thing and like to have 'low price' and 'comparison' sites listed. I appreciate not having to ferret them out."

"I don't care and get an idea of the paid listings but would prefer them to be listed separately or marked better so I could determine what I want to look at."

What frustrates you most about Internet search?

"Going to a site and not being able to get out. Closing a window and discovering that you have closed the search and are now back at your desktop looking at Bill Gate's f'ing clouds."

"Of the first 50 companies listed only about 10 are truly what I am looking for so time is wasted filtering through them."

"Pop-up windows and irrelevant pages coming up."

"That a search comes back with hundreds of thousands and sometimes million+ results.  Who has time to look through that many?  I feel sorry for the poor sods at the end -- do they ever get any hits?"

"Dead or missing links."

"Mankind has yet to put all knowledge onto the Web. But seriously, I think it's a pretty cool thing for research and learning. Can even be entertaining, in a pinch."

"Searching through lots of irrelevant items to reach my topic of interest. Some filtering system would improve searches."

"That I show up well in 'discounted educational products' and crappy in 'educational products.' That I spend an hour a day on average retuning my site to make Google happy, and I never know when it works. That I have submitted my stuff to Froogle and it never has shown me as anything other than an 'internet search' page even though they said my
stuff was properly submitted."

"I'm a fairly skilled searcher, so when I either can't find what I'm looking for, or can't narrow the search down from 100,000 pages, and I've tried everything I can think of, that's frustrating."

What's your go-to search engine, and why?

Most said Google. The reasons vary, but primarily it's top-of-mind and it’s a habit. However, one friend said he prefers 'Internet Explorer because it's the most accurate.' He's uses the address bar and whatever default was set.

First the Google fans…

"It's got a 95 percent success rate at providing me with what I want the first time I enter a search query. The other 5 percent I have to tweak the query with quotes and other things, but I can usually find what I'm looking for within 3 search tries."

"I use it to navigate so I don't leave a trail on my computer at the office."

"Everyone says it is the best. I like the fact that when I spell something correctly [he's British], for example 'traveller,' which Americans misspell as 'traveler,' Google very cheerfully asks, 'Did you mean traveler?' Small point, not worth losing sleep over. What would be handy would be a Google response for synonyms."

"It gives good, relevant results. But so do lots of others -- I used to favor AltaVista, but switched when AV became high bandwidth. Google's big draw for me is that it's low bandwidth. Low-BW = fast = better."

"Google and Dogpile -- just habit."

"The logic that is used for selection seems to be more effective. I like the simple interface (no pop-ups, flashing/scrolling ads or weird colors), and the results are generally relevant to what I'm searching for."

And the others…

"Yahoo!, either .co.uk or .com, depending on where I want my search to focus (.co.uk has a UK-only search option) because it usually interprets my search more accurately than any of the others. Very occasionally I use Google."

"The home page my browser starts with is AltaVista. Good all-around search engine.  Google is equally good, but in a different way.  There are things that I can find faster with Google and other things I can find faster with AltaVista.  Depends on what I'm looking for."

What's the best search engine you've ever stumbled across?

"When it was very young, AltaVista was the best. Then Google came along and it has consistently been better than any competitor."

"That would be, let me see...ah!  Google!"

"I thought Dogpile was pretty good, pulled up a lot of info that didn't come up on the main sites."

"I think I may yet have to stumble across it, but failing that I do like Yahoo!"

"Google. I have tried Yahoo! and a couple of other different search engines (a pile of them at http://www.blueangels.net/ ) and have always gone back to Google."

"Probably Google. The Hyper Dictionary and whatis.com are also useful."

"Copernicus. It highlights you search words in yellow, and then shows you the highlighted word in the document."

"AskJeeves is useless. Totally useless. I have never, EVER found anything even remotely useful on that engine. Why is it still around? Once in a great while I'll give it a shot to see if it still sucks, and it always does."

And a few parting shots...

I gave them a final opportunity to send a message to search engines and marketers.

"I would like to be able to tell Google to not search retail stores. For instance, sometimes I enter a search term and get pages for retailers that are selling things with the term. I would love it if there were a way to just get search results that were retailers and a way to filter out retailers. As a retailer, I would *love* to see this so I don't get queries like 'do you know how to get Expo markers out of fabrics?' BTW, the answer to that is 'don't let your kids use Expo markers on the couch! D'oh!'"

"I wish [our] default in-corporate search engine was as effective searching company documents (on our intranet) as Google is searching the Internet."

"The phone book engines (SBC "Smart Pages") I've found are really bad and limiting and inexcusably slow.  Wish someone came up with a good phone number search engine."

"It would be nice to have a wish list which could lie dormant on your computer, which would pop up a window to let you know when it had found it."

"Any tips on how to narrow down a search so that it absolutely only brings up what you're looking for?"

"I am amazed it works as well as it does."

The tribe has spoken. Do with it what you will.