While perusing the Google Analytics data on our little blog here, I stumbled across a fascinating thing: people are absolutely horrible searchers and you don't need to worry quite as much about how high up your site is on search results. That is because people clearly click through pages and pages of results, most of which can't possibly be what they're looking for, yet they do not refine their searches.

Two cases in point: there have been 29 visits to my Craigslist post via searches for "Craigslist". When I saw that, I thought, "hmm... I must be pretty high up there," so I checked it out. Not by a long shot. That post is on the 9th page of results! Seriously? 29 different people (they were all new visits) clicked through 9 pages of results to click on my page? I don't go past the second page. There's no point. If it's not on the second page, you're not searching right.

The second instance is Citizendium. There were 12 visits to my critique from 4 different people who searched for "Citizendium." That post was on the 6th page of results, though now is not even in the top 40 (that's as far as I'd go).

I just don't understand how anyone could wade through so much crap to get to a link they want to follow. Maybe they're just browsing through to see what's out there, but 29 people wading through 9 pages to read a story about searching Craigslist? Why not just add "search" to your search, like 76 other people did and find the story on the first page?

It's nice to know that I have some job security.