Google can’t search for what you can’t describe

Google works backwards to the human brain.

(No its not a Google-bash, just an interesting observation of the clash between human-think and techno-think)

Someone once said that you need to know how to spell a word in order to look it up in a dictionary. Searching is just the same.

Try searching for a graphic logo… (ever wonder why ‘The man formerly known as Prince’ chaned his name back from a squiggle?)

Or give it a picture of an unkown location and ask for information on the location

You cant give it a picture and ask to search for similar.

Even when you know some of the details – its really next to impossible to search for “That red brick school with the white picket fence in Northern England”

Now apply that thinking to business use:

You name a product with a generic name – like Microsoft’s ‘Word’ – seems an easy to remember nice generic name – eureka!

If you try searching for “Word problem” you will get an enormous list of kids educational games and the like. And Microsoft are a big company with a global marketing budget – what chances have you got?

So – in the brave new world you need something you can search for becuase in an always-online-and-searching-world

GOOGLE CANT SEARCH FOR WHAT YOU CANT DESCRIBE

• A cool wiggly graphic and no descriptive name on your company cars
• A cool landmark building with insignificant signage
• A company product name that is used to describe a million other things

Writing for Google II – Movies are bigger than Money

I seemed to have struck a chord with many of you when I wrote about Google trends recently.

Ive been doing some more digging and the results are intriguing to say the least.

Any business term I use – Marketing, Sales, Business, Trends, Money etc – all are decreasing in popularity. Without exception movie stars, sports and other terms best described as entertainment far outrank business terms.

Technology as a term seems only of importance in India and Australia, while a ranking comparison of God,Good,Evil and Bad has Good way above the others – except in Brazil where Evil wins the day!

It would seem to me the long tail is getting even longer – and the super-mega-stars of the search term rankings still belong to whatever subject the mainstream media gossip about.

Writing for Google

Like most people – whenever I am working on a web, blog or other ’searchable’ item – I have one eye on what might appeal to the search engines – the google effect. We all imagine the worlds population sitting at their computers, typing thought provoking terms, and browsing intelligent results.

Yet anytime I look at the Google Hot Trends the most popular terms (volcanic in google-speak) are things like “Flat tummy diet”, “Britney spears” and whatever is being discussed in the broadcast media of the moment.

As I write this – the top ten terms being searched for are:

1.	rick renzi
2.	lattie mcgee
3.	cubs tickets
4.	cubs.com
5.	lou gehrig
6.	chicago cubs
7.	hope dworaczyk
8.	john paul jones arena
9.	bassmaster classic
10.	logan airport

New York Minute – heck – try a Google second

A new descriptive word appears in a blog

One hour later  a definition is published on Wikipedia

Two hours later it enters Google trends top ten hotlist of search terms for the USA.

One day later – I’ve forgotten the term. No sign of it on Google trends – the world has moved on.