POST 7

Some web searchers are looking for a particular web site that they already have in mind (last page of Bartelle). That is, they don't search for "social networking service," they search for "facebook." Use google trends to investigate website names (like brands) that people use as keywords. Try to compare prominent web sites or brands that do similar things (popular music sites, television networks, etc.). How do these compare to generic words and phrases that mean the same thing?

According to the reading by Bartelle, people search for a certain website, not searching a general word to describe all kinds of websites under the same category. So, I wanted to investigate a website/brand that the majority uses as a keyword or acknowledges as a general vocabulary to describe the original object. I chose ‘chewy’ as a brand name and ‘granola bar’ as a generic word that refers to 'chewy'.

I searched those two words on google trends, and this is the graph I got. Blue graph is for 'chewy' and red graph is for 'granola bar', and 'chewy' is 8 times more searched than 'granola bar'. The result supports Bartelle’s argument perfectly; the word, ‘chewy’, is used eight times more frequently than ‘granola bar’. ‘Granola bar’ does not even show up till 2009, whereas ‘chewy’ is already used in a high frequency since the end of 2005. Comparing the frequency of both words since 2009 when using ‘granola bar’ appears the first time, use of ‘chewy’ still exceeds ‘granola bar’ with such a high rate.

From Bartelle’s reading, ‘nearly 25 percent of searchers were looking for “a specific web site that I already had in mind.”’(30) As we look at the graph, the outcome supports Bartelle’s idea and even seems to over-support it due to 8 times higher frequency of searching 'chewy'. In the reading, Piper Jaffray said true online commercial search is higher than 35 percent, and Broder rejected most online search looks for information. Since chewy is searched constantly for several years, especially in the end of the year with an extremely high rate, both Jaffray and Broder’s ideas sound authentic too.

Just one thing that this outcome does not support is Majestic Research report in June, 2004. This research said that almost 50 percent of searchers used two or three words, and only 20 percent used only one word. Even though ‘chewy’ is just one word and ‘granola bar’ is two words, ‘chewy’ is eight times more searched and this conflicts with what the research claims. Because there are more ideas corresponding to the graph, I concluded this chewy example well supports the reading by Bartelle. One assumption to explain why Majestic Research does not correspond with chewy example is that using one word which is a name of well-known product is easier for searchers to type in and identify the object.