Cultivating Good Search Habits to Find What You Are Looking For

I hate to say it, but we are lazy information consumers. We have become fat and complacent from eating at the fast food equivalent o vedic maths f information supply, namely Internet Search. We are used to being supplied with 780 000 results in 0.2 seconds. To make matters worse, as search has got better, bringing us more results in less time, we have got lazier. The average searcher hardly goes past the first ten results, missing out on the gems of information hidden amongst the 125 million websites out there. This article examines the problem with search and provides the first of 5 suggestions to become more effective information consumers. We watch what food we put into our bodies and it is time to consider what information we are putting into our minds. Let me be clear we have to use search engines. There is currently no other effective way of navigating through 125 million domains to find the right information. So that is out of our control. What is in our control is how we use the search engine. So the first tip for effective searching is: Go Deep to find the Gold Research by the iProspect group examined our search habits and how they have changed over 6 years. The sad news is we have got worse. 90% of people only click on search results in the first 3 pages of results. That's 30 results out of a possible million or so that the search engine brings back. 62% of people don't go past page 1. There is a high probability that some fantastic pages of crucial information are hiding further down than page three and so I would encourage you to go further into your search results to look for the gold. It is also worth mentioning the difference between organic and paid search results. If you look at the top few results, you will see two words that are slightly grayed out saying "Sponsored Link". These companies pay to have their result show up first on the list. It has no relevance over the quality of the information that is displayed on their website. So generally, unless you are looking for that specific company, go organic. Au Natural always tends to be better. In summary, don't be part of the 90% that gets the same information as everyone else. Be different, and dig deeper. In our next installment of this series we will discuss the second tip, Variety is the Spice of Life.