search & co.

Terms such as search engine optimization, search engine advertising (advertising), conversions, KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and much more. dominate our everyday life. Behind these (and others) the commissioning company is given the opportunity — with a system — to have more success with different perspectives, tactics and strategies.

What it means to be “successful” is defined by each company itself. The supporting agency often helps to clarify whether the stars or the moon are in the foreground. Of course depending on the size of the company and in-house knowledge / resources. What I noticed a long time ago in the ever-changing search, there is less.

The results will be fewer. It is difficult to check (no one has access to algorithms per se) which screw it was that caused this. What is important is in line (and this is a personal view) with attention spans (which are declining annually and are implicit in statistics in usage reports from e.g. social media channels). Depending on the skills (digital literacy) of the user and the ability to process the information provided, the level of attention varies. A book is devoured differently by different people (depending on age, education, interests etc. – > socio-demographics is sometimes a term).

There are some funny, and not so funny, movies that explore the power of analytics and data. Prepared in a way that is understandable for laypeople and those interested (I swear 😉 ) BUT — BUT — what if I don’t really care, can’t care (no time resources) and I CAN’T find what I’m looking for? Doesn’t that exist then?

A legitimate question. Let’s assume that the answer can be solved with time. You can use other search engines, other browsers, other computers (delete the cookies everywhere beforehand, otherwise a profile/mixed profile will be used and results will be delivered based on existing data). If nothing comes out, you can be very impertinent. In Austria we have access to huge databases from the universities, for example Vienna. (my home university, therefore in the foreground here). The search [ u serach ] there may not yield what we expect (no Quick and dirty, cool edited, etc.) BUT we may find keywords, approaches and new ideas that other search results deny us. Why? Because other metrics are used to generate results. So there are probably a few thousand articles (or 127 results) on the topic of attention spans in a wide variety of constellations (can be broken down further).

Long story short -> There is nothing new under the sun.

PS a brief attempt at derivation of this verse is given here (reasonably understandable to people of all faiths).