Most Search Engine Users Stop at Page 3

ambient12 writes "The BBC reports on a study saying that, despite the depth of content internet search providers offer, most people stop at page 3 or earlier." From the article: "It also found that a third of users linked companies in the first page of results with top brands. The study surveyed 2,369 people from a US online consumer panel. It also found 62% of those surveyed clicked on a result on the first page, up from 48% in 2002. Some 90% of consumers clicked on a link in these pages, up from 81% in 2002. "

It makes sense

[random_amber]

I stopped reading this article before third sentence...

Duh

[eln]

If relevant results aren't in the first 3 pages, I'm going to retry my query with different keywords, because obviously I wasn't searching for the right thing.

In my experience, most results after the first 2 or 3 pages are utterly worthless, and usually contain a bunch of foreign language mailing list posts, and repeats of earlier results mirrored on different sites.

Re:It makes sense

[eggsovereasy]

Just shows that search engine technology is getting better.

This is news?

[AuMatar]

Search engines are made to find what you're looking for. If you don't find it on page 1, you generally need to be more specific in your keywords. So is anyone really surprised that search engines are getting better at finding what we want, and that people are getting better at forming querries with experience?

Stop at page 3?

[vertinox]

If I don't find my search on the first page, I re-word my search.

If it isn't on the top first 5 hits, then I'm not going to find it any faster by scouring pages worth of info. Adding quotes or using a different phrase is my next step.

Makes sense

[misleb]

I don't usually go past page 3. Not because I am lazy or have a short attention span. I just find that after 3 pages, the information is hardly relevent and I try different search terms. Although I can't say I use it to determine "top brands" as I'm usually searching for some kind of tech solution or documentation or something like that. Who Googles stuff like "shoes" or "harddrive" or something generic like that? Those kinds of searches are for specific shopping sites. And then, one is often searching for a specific price range or similar.

What's the big deal? Should people be looking past page 3?

-matthew

Bull.

[2short]

You've got to be kidding. So where you work:

  It's fine to be reading slashdot.
  It's fine to look at whatever you expected the words "hot chick" to link to.
  You're going to get fired if your screen displays a wikipedia article that includes a grainy scan of a 36 year old newspaper picture, because if you look close, there's a boobie!

If your employers are truly that irrational, quit. Asking others who don't even work there to worry about such insanity is crazy.

Re:Well, duh.

[ergo98]

In other news, nobody likes to grovel through page after page of marginally-relevant crap.

Marginally relevant? I'll bet that for most terms you'd find just as applicable of results on the 10th page as you would on the 1st.

Not only are there loads of excellent results out there -- far more than would fit on a couple of pages -- but the ones that got on the "front page" early (possibly just by association) are perhaps unjustly boosted: People making webpages/blog entries invariably link to search results that they themselves found in the first couple of results, handing some link goodness to a result simply because it already had a good standing.

Re:It wasn't always that way

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll sometimes go as deep as ten pages when performing research, but usually after three or four pages I'll just revise my query. If I can't find what I want using a search engine, I'll use the search engine to find a site that will help me find what I want. If that seems to take too long I'll use Wikipedia to find links to sites that might links to sites containing what I want. Once I find sites that are full of useful content I bookmark them. Search engine results are honestly getting worse with time, and I just get tired of looking through pages of crap.

Reformulate query, search again..

[MDMurphy]

Similar to the post above this, I do a quick search and if I don't see the results I'm looking for I reformulate the query. If the first page doesn't have what you are looking for, and lower ranked pages are supposedly less useful, your problem is likely the query, not the results.

After serveral iterations of re-doing the query I'll then go deeper and deeper in the pages on the chance that what I'm looking for it more is more esoteric than what the top ranked pages contain.

Also like the previous post I'll often hop off to Wikipedia. Since often a Wikipedia link is included in the original search results I don't really expect to find the answer there, but it might have additional information to help me refine my search.

I thought the linked article was lacking in that it didn't seem to reference re-searching. It might just as well be true that people will reformat their queries until the results they want are in the first three pages. Why read 10 pages of summaries if adding an additional search term will bring a link from page 10 to page 1?

Re:Is that expected?

[Anonymous Coward]

I stop at the first page to. If what I need isn't visible on the first page within a five second scroll from top to bottom I redefine my query.

Re:It makes sense

[aussie_a]

No it doesn't. If the first 3 pages are shit, I figure the rest will be as well.

Re:It makes sense

[kimvette]

Or scumbags have skewed search results through cloaking, doorway pages, hidden text, and linkfarms.