Searcher Moms & Their Golden Triangle
Posted by Lisa Tarticchio on June 19th 2008 in SES Toronto, Uncategorized
Wednesday was an all around Enlightening morning at Search Engine Strategies Toronto 2008, as Pavan Lee, Research Manager for Microsoft discussed Searcher Moms and their ever growing importance on the internet.
Mothers (particularly mine) are not only wonderful, but lets face it they run the planet! Moms steer the majority of household buying decisions particularly in the retail, entertainment and financial service industries. This session addressed the tactical Tao of targeting moms.
Searcher Mom’s use the internet to find information on anything from travel to appliances they are incredibly search savvy and have immense buying power. Another interesting finding was that Searcher Mom’s tend to be both educated and affluent with a total household income of over $100,000 per year.
Mom’s are heavy media consumers with 90% using the internet at least twice a day. The number one thing they seek online are deals, sales and promotions. 2/3 of all Mom’s who use the internet are driven online by an ad they have seen elsewhere. Information gathered also indicates that the higher the cost of the item or service Mom’s seek the longer they take to research and gather information.
Gordon Hotchkiss, President & CEO of Enquiro Search Solutions Inc. provided us all with a tour of the golden triangle. The original eye- tracking research released in 2004 studied the eye movements of individuals who were served up various results on Google. Researchers found that eye movement was concentrated to the top left corner and down approximately four search results. A 2008 follow- up study expanded on the original research to encompass Yahoo and MSN as well.
Armed with this information it is easy to understand why the first line of your organic search result is so important. The average amount of time spent on a Search Engine results page is 12 seconds. On average an individual spends 0.5- 2 second assessing an organic result for quality and relevancy. Thus, the quality of the top ad is critical.
People also scan in groups of 3-4, the question is why? Gordon explains that this is due to the way that the working memory functions. Our minds function in incredibly complex and fascinating ways. For example when an object such as a clarinet is mentioned our understanding of what a clarinet is is retrieved from many different areas of the brain. The working memory is located in the pre-frontal cortex and has limited space, making way for the idea of satisficing.
Satisficing is made easy by search engines, where answers and solutions are served up quickly and with only the click of a button. People also inherently like choice, offering up a variety of of 3-4 results help to satisfy this desire for choice.
Richard Zwicky, Founder & CEO of Enquisite, recommended taking home 4 major points:
- Make use of different terms for the same things. This will allow you to be found the way your customers search since not all people have the same vernacular as you.
- The same query made in different places will serve up different results due to geo targeting. Be sure that you are optimized for all of the markets relevant to your business.
- People do not typically venture too deeply into search engine results pages. Once you reach the coveted first page make sure that you are ready and optimized in order to make the most of it.
- How do you use this Information? Be prepared to listen to your customers, and discover what terms to optimize for. All of the data you need is in front of you, you just have to see it.
Lisa Tarticchio, is a member of Search Engine People, a Toronto SEO and SEM firm whose mission it is to provide quality solutions that meet your business’s goals.
