I have a question to you: When an individual online uses a traditional search engine such as Yahoo, google, MSN, typing a search phrase such as “Back Pain” into the search box, what is he looking for?
I plan to follow the discussion in a Part II at a later point so please comment in comments area. The more feedback the more interesting this will be.
Reason I’m asking is because I believe in terms of technologists, content providers, advertisers, and a community, we can do so much better. In order to do better must understand the issues and problems we currently are having. Your answers to the above question will help us all find better ways to tackle the biggest problem in technology these days, Search.
Thanks in advance for participating, looking forward to reading your thoughts!
Sahar
A surprisingly interesting question…
I would think if I typed back pain into a search engine, it would be because I was thinking, “I have back pain, and I want to know more about it”
- rich
Great Question:
I have typed in back pain.. It was looking for a quick fix to get some relief for my back.
Dan
I’d say that someone typing in a search query is looking for one of the following:
- description
= explanation
- solution
- the experience of others with [insert topic]
I think the phrase “back pain” is more easy decipher than an more esoteric phrase but as a search engine i would wonder about the locality of the searcher. This is not new but as the search provider I would probably want to isolate the ISP of the searcher. After that I would wonder if the person is wanting academic info or personal info. Being that your search engine is a question based query system i would ask something along the lines as:
Are you a looking for research on back pain? or
Are you looking for bank pain remedies?
One is geared to physicians or medical students whiles the other is for sufferers of back pain.
As with any topic its about drilling down to a core question. Such as an injury to “x” vertebrate would cause what kind of pain?
Geo-targeting and then ascertaining if the info desired is for research purposes or for personal reasons are 2 very important things to determine to really give accurate results in my humble opinion.
Hi,
I would say it more than just looking for common relief for back pain.
I would think the person making this search because of a more serious or unusually back pain…something that’s out of the norm…and has been going on for a period time of time…which common treatments have not helped.
Peace!
Dan
I would think when searching for back pain I want to know what types there are and which one may I be experienceing. Is it a muscular back pain. Strain? Spinal whip lash? Is it from bad computer posture? Maybe I am just stressed out.
Maybe I would look for types of remedies to sooth the ache.
I am a Google addict. I probably use it 100 times a day every day.
It is excellent for deep research on specific items. It also unmatched in its ability to serve contextual up to the minute news items. I also use it as a spelling suggestion tool, and that is without getting into the bits that are specific to IDNs, like the on the fly translation tools.
I don’t use Google Trends much. But this is more to do with me not really believing the Overture argument. My search terms are generally two to four words. My domain registrations are mostly one word generics or geographics. There is absolutely no correlation between what I search and what I register.
The person would like some information about the subject “back pain” for himself, for someone else, for study purposes, etc.
I think that “back pain” is not that of an ambiguous term so i think the person (lets call him Joe) seeks a doctor to relieve him of his pain, a description about back pain symptoms, seeking others that have that (same) problem or maybe medicine for the pain.
Also people tend to broaden their search if the first result set doesn’t meet their needs. So if Joe seeks an exercise for some relief of his back pain he clearly won’t find it with “back pain” so maybe he searches again for “back pain exercise”.
People are also getting better at using search engines. More than 3 years ago, people where using mostly 1 word for their initial search query. Nowadays 2 words are used more than 1.
ps. Heck for all we know he may be searching for a Norwegian rock band named “back pain”
Sahar,
I have suffered from back pain and have looked it up. What I wanted to learn is:
1 - more about it,
2 - how to cure it
3 - who can help me take care of it via traditional and non-traditional methods.
Usually it takes multiple searches to get all the information that I want and not all through the same search engine/source.
Greg
If I was looking up “Back Pain” I’d most likely be experiencing back pain from something outside of any normal back pain I might have had in the past. Or experiencing back pain centered somewhere in my back that seems alarming like my kidneys or lungs.
Else, I was frustrated with what I knew already and/or had been told by the experts (doctors, pharma mamufacturers, etc.). ie; chronic back pain with no relief.
But it’s possible I’m looking for the causes of back pain to either avoid it or possibly cause it to effect someone else. ie; What might make a co-workers back ache. How to avoid that in the future or how to convince someone we really need new desks and chairs.