A real estate agent recently mentioned to me that even though he's still in the top of Google for common terms about his local real estate market, his traffic is down significantly. What would explain this? How could this be possible? All indications are that his market (a southwest US city) is growing rapidly and the number of new residents moving there is climbing faster than other cities.
One of the explanations that I’ve come to understand about search dynamics is that the general population of search engine users has changed significantly over the last 8 years – essentially consumers are now better conditioned and know how to use search engines and with greater efficiency. Many of us now know that to get better results in a search query we must use more focused terms and typically more terms.
Think about how you use Google versus someone who is less adept. Experienced search users have matured to be more efficient with search. Those of us that are search power users (i.e., anyone that has used Google for say, more than five years) don’t realize how efficient you really are. Furthermore, as advanced Internet users we [mistakenly] assume that less experienced Internet users continue to do things the way all newcomers to Internet search do things. This is simply not the case – almost all search users are traversing much the same learning curve that us more experienced users have followed – they are learning (with every query) that they can manipulate the results to get exactly what they want. The shift is ever so subtle – it’s almost impossible to detect, but it is there none-the-less.
Armed with the ability to find exactly what they want, is it possible that your target audience of searchers are simply skipping over your high ranking terms that aren't so specific and getting right to the information they want?
Yes, there is a big difference in ways the power user and the novice search. For example, did you know that many people simply put their search term(s) in the URL address bar?
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