Will Mainstream Users Ever Learn About The Browser's Address Bar?
Traffic analytics company Hitwise released search market share numbers for dating websites in June today and two things were striking about the data.
Ad supported free site PlentyOfFish is trouncing everyone in the dating game and huge numbers of mainstream users are still afraid to navigate there directly using their browser's address bar. The economics of user ignorance are serious and could have big implications for online innovation. Update: Check out the great discussion on this in the comments below - we may have been convinced that this isn't such a bad thing after all.
More than 10% of the searches for the top 10 dating search terms were URLs (match.com, plentyoffish.com) and almost all of the queries were something that .com could have been added to for direct navigation. If mainstream users learned to navigate using the address bar instead of the search bar - what would happen to the search economy and innovation online?
What is Wrong With People?
How many times have you seen someone enter a URL in the wrong field of their browser? Apparently it happens a whole lot, over and over again, all day long, all around the world.
Those users end up being shown links other than the place they want to go, including sponsored ads, competing sites and related sites sometimes with confusing URLs. Many of the top dating sites are buying AdWords links to their own sites in searches for their own URLs. How much are the search engines making from user click throughs of Match.com AdWords when users search for Match.com, even though Match.com is the top natural search result as well?
Oddly, no one appears to have bought ads for the search term plentyoffish.com on Google, though Hitwise seems to suggest that would be a good idea. We won't claim to understand AdWords enough to explain why there aren't ads there now - perhaps a reader can do so.
Web 2.0? Uh...
While we're all excited about the Read-Write Web, filled with empowered user contributors and thrilling new web applications - a huge number of people online don't know the difference between their browser's address bar and search bar. Let's keep that in perspective.
What will it take for them to learn? Do the browser providers and search engines want them to? They've got a clear financial stake in that not happening.
In fact, countless parties online probably do. If mainstream users learned how to use the internet, it could be devastating for an online economy based on monetizing their ignorance. Everyone knows that's true for spammers and phishers, but the numbers indicate that there are a whole lot more people than that who are dependent on user ignorance. Luckily for them, there's plenty of it to go around.
If more savvy users are less likely to click on ads, what does that mean for website usability and user education? Will an explosive future of smart users creating content online and using the web's powerful features be limited by the financial interests of the companies providing online services? We think that's probably already happening and it's a real shame.
Update: Reader John Andrews articulates beautifully another perspective.
Don't underestimate the user.When she searches Amazon.com and gets something else in the top 2-3, she wants to know what that something else is, and why it ranks for her Amazon search. Perhaps there is something better than Amazon.com that other people know about, and she wants to know about that, too.
Even if the top 5 are amazon.com URLs, she may scan them to see what Google is suggesting is hot at Amazon.com, along the way to whatever she was after. Maybe there is something cool at Amazon she doesn't yet know about, and she wants to know about that,too.
The path to Amazon.com via Google is a richer experience for her than the direct navigation path, without much cognitive overhead and without much perceived risk.
If the search engine earns a reputation for abusing the results set (with ads or paid placement) she will go away. Don't underestimate the power of Google's "Ph.D." reputation amongst her and her regular-folk peers. They have ben granted tremendous authority.
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my mom types every address into the Google search window - no wonder they have 70% of the search market :P
Posted by: Nathaniel Payne
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July 17, 2008 10:57 AM
i hadnt even thought of that part of it!
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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July 17, 2008 11:05 AM
I am a techie or sorts and I never use the address bar for the fear of mistyped urls and ending up in phishing sites which immediately download crap into the cache.
even for mail.yahoo.com.. I type it in the google bar and click the resulting link.
Just to be sure :)
Wow ! This post has made me nostalgic ! I used to work with Dell's tech support and almost 70 % of customers everyday used to type the website address in the search bar. Whenever I asked them to go to a particular website, they'd say that there is no site...just search results ! :-)
Really, I mean we have people talking about blogs & RSS going mainstream when the majority of web users are ignorant about such basic stuff. I was sure 99% of the internet population doesn't understand blogs. I'm damn sure now !
I've always said that if I go back to school, my thesis will be on how a persons use of Windows correlates to their personality and psychological make-up. For example, how do people cut and paste? Edit cut, edit paste vs. ctrl-C, ctrl-V vs. right clicks.
People putting URL's outside of the address bar is one of those things that is a peeve when I have to watch it, but interesting when you ask people why they do it.
Sometimes people don't know (my mom), sometimes it is carry over behavior from AOL, sometimes, as Jay points out, it is to protect from typos, though not often. Sometimes people don't know that they can do a CTRL +Enter to get the .com suffix (or simply can't type). For them, it is easier to start a URL and click away.
Some people do it so that it doesn't show up in their browsing history. Especially with dating/adult sites.
I know that it shows up in the actual history, but the address bar doesn't try to auto-complete it, that was until Firefox 3 changed their bar...
This made me think of Cabel's great little collection of Japanese search box ads.
I admit to typing in URLS from time to time. With internet so fast It doesn't really cause enough of a delay to cause grief.
http://www.cabel.name/2008/03/japan-urls-are-totally-out.html
Link to previously mentioned article.
Wow, never even heard of PlentyofFish.com -- interesting article... ignorance is.... bliss?
People type into the Google search box because they don't realize that the web is not yet the semantic web, and so they ask that search box to 'find me what I mean' (not some ditzy dub dub dub gleeble dot gurp). They're way ahead of Marshall and all the pundits and nerds (me included) who have become artificially intelligent through too much code wanking :-)
Posted by: Mark Szpakowski
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July 17, 2008 11:45 AM
that's a fascinating theory, Mark. I think you may be on to something.
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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July 17, 2008 11:48 AM
I imagine a future where the address bar is removed and only a search dialog remains. This seems natural: entering search terms is much more forgiving than specific URLs. Those of us in the business of actual addresses can add an address-bar as a plugin.
I think this comes down to simple visual design.
One big white box and another big white box. The visual interface element is exactly the same yet the function is completely different.
Why is this a user ignorance problem and not a browser interface problem? Why should the typical web user have to know anything about the colons, slashes, dots, and other assorted weirdness that appears in the address bar?
Why should they see any of that, unless they choose too?
"If mainstream users learned how to use the internet..." They know how to use it just fine, and they are smart enough to figure out quicker ways to get where they want to go when bad interfaces make them use url syntax to get there.
Marshall - great post - sometimes it's easy to navel gaze a little to much in this rarefied world of the digerati. While we could wax lyrical about the e-tards who can't even tell the difference between url box and search box - those e-tards make up the majority out there.
Really design should be focussed totally on them and not those of us who, at the end of the say, would probably just prefer a command line search prompt
Maybe the answer lies in the address bar makeup...or rather, the url's shown. Most users are afraid of their computers and it's possible that they're also afraid of the address bar. Especially when one sees :// signs and ?, & and encoded site parameters. On the other hand, the search bar is a lot cleaner and more inviting to the average user. The fact is, url's appear technical while search bars are much more intuitive. Maybe we should get address bars to behave more like the search bar.
Address bar? Search box - to many users, putting in an accidental comma is no worse no matter where.
"Excuse me sir, do you use a RSS reader, do you read blogs, write a blog, use Skype?"
No NO No no No
The answer is very simple - People feel safer with google correcting their mistake than the typo sending them to a virus, porn laden site. How many times has a slip of the finger sent you to a site you would never visit. Do a google search and even if you do a typo somehow google still points you to the site you want to go to.
I'd love to see this behavior broken down by age group. Do 17 year olds do this as much as 37 year olds? 57 year olds?
And why do people, apparently including some commenters, not bookmark sites they go to regularly? I don't type mail.google.com in my address bar... I have it bookmarked and on the toolbar in FF3... same with other frequently checked sites.
I've watched this behavior for 10 years. I worked for a Fortune 500 restaurant company and the #1 search term was the name of the restaurant (.com) ... Most browsers with home pages set to a search engine have the focus of the cursor in the field. This enables people to start typing right away and hit the enter key.
It seemingly was people of any age-- relative only by their experience with computers and internet access. (Ever run into those people who check email once a week? (and that's all they seem to use online, not like they are doing the whole email-is-dead la la la thing))
Enough people direct navigate to make several multi-million dollar revenue businesses in the lead gen space… check out http://www.philadelphiadrunkdrivinglawyer.com/ and then check out the google results for the same terms… http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=philadelphia+drunk+driving+lawyer . The 1st site doesn’t even show up in the top google search results, yet stitch together a few hundred similar URLs and a basic content management system and you’ve got a real lead gen business.
I think the fact that people are entering site names into google reflects that google is perceived to be a) Trustworthy and b) more reliable than one's own memory. URLs are confusing for average Joes, they can't remember if its match.com .org etc. And are scared if they get it wrong that they might go to some nasty phishing site and have their identity stolen by the much hyped 'cyber-criminals'.
Great points all - it does seem that, as Jahbuh said, people would rather have Google fix their mistakes than get taken to an untrustworthy place. I think I may have been persuaded, perhaps there's nothing wrong with that at all!
They will never learn. I think the opposite will happen. The address bar will disappear being replaced by the search bar. Why? Because most of the time people search the web even if they know exactly what their target is.
The url is and will remain just a way for the browser, and for the search engines to identify content. This kind of usage pattern shows us that the users care only about the real information, they try to strip away useless bits like http, www, or .com and there is nothing wrong with this.
one thing to think about: if this behavior is generational, then we will see a sharp drop in the search market as these users die off, literally. (thinking long term, here)
Two more data points:
Most people set their homepage to yahoo/google etc and by default the cursor focus for these pages goes to the search box once you land on the page. Thus to go to any website you would have to take your mouse to the address bar and type (majority of webusers would not know about ctrl L). Why do that when you can just type what you want hit enter and google would be more accurate at typo correction anyway...
When you enter a phrase into the address bar in firefox and i think even ie7 (for one word, it tries to append .com etc). By default it would use a search engine to search for it. In firefox for example it does a I am feeling lucky in google search which goes to the first hit. thus I can go to unbox.amazon.com by typing "amazon unbox" and it would still be counted as a search
URLs in the address bar!?! Ha! I browse the web with lynx and IP addresses. URLs are for wimps
I got rid of my search box in FF some time ago, because I never used it. I use Dash Command to search instead (similar to Launchy but better).
I don't agree that the URL bar needs to go away. It's already merging with search bar with extensions like Peers and CyberSearch. The two don't have to be distinct from one another.
Peers:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6589
CyberSearch:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7931
If user gets where he wants even when he uses the tool "wrongly", from his perspective everything is alright.
And it is! He learned how to use the tool, he is happy. You should be happy for him too.
Too bad some engineers think browser URL bar and search box have to be two different things. Users disagree.
Andraž Tori, Zemanta
I see a couple of problems here.
1.a. People's reliance upon Google to get them where they want to go isn't 100% secure. Last I heard, Google is still susceptible of getting gamed, which means people will go to where they think is the right place, without being able to know the difference. This inflates the value of SEOa and blackhat SEO techniques.
1.b. This is the equivalent of knowing your friend lives near McDonalds, and getting confused everytime you see a different McDonalds. If you don't know the address, you don't really know where you're going. (It's always the first result for "keyword" search result).
2. Another problem is very large companies still occasionally mix up the whole www. non-www. issue. Until Wieden+Kennedy released their new site last year, going to http://wk.com would get you a 404 ERROR. It did not redirect to http://www.wk.com, nor did it resolve. I even told their IT dept. of this problem 6 months before the new site launched and they never fixed it.
Or, when people set up a very common subdomain and don't include a redirect for www.subdomain.domain.com. (think blog.domain.com... people will still put in the www. before blog, even though that doesn't work by defualt). I've seen lots of people type in www. before a subdomain only to have it 404 error. If web developers can't create usable domains, and account for some ignorance in terms of subdomains and the non-standard use of www, how can we expect our tech-ignorant friends and family members to navigate those hurdles WITHOUT google?
i think it is just less effort for users to leave out the .com, and less effort and ease of use is what its all about for us humans. There's a few points up above on user interface and how it should be concentrated on more ... um, duh, what do two of the most successful companies in the world at the moment (apple and google) focus on the most?
There really is a tech bubble at the moment, but its enveloped around all the tech nerds who need to get out more.
I never knew you could hit control enter to make .com appear ... sweet.
One box to rule them all!
Why doesn't the next gen of FF, IE Safari etc just scrap the idea of address and search boxes and just put one box.
So easy to build in, just about any code monkey could write the expression to work out what to do with the users input.
Sure there are browser extensions at that do this sort of thing already but it real terms the number of people actually using them are few. It's not reasonable to say stupid users, it's more like stupid developers for not solving the problem correctly.
Richard Chetwynd, I like your take on this. This conversation has really made me reconsider my perspective on the issue!
In FireFox 3, the google search box acts more as a URL bar than it is being given credit for.
Type in the url with the .com (or other extention), and you go directly to the site. So that is already much less threatening for the non-technically inclined.
I always wondered why the top search term for my site was my site name. I always thought that really strange.
I guess this explains it.
My favorite technique is to enter the words "Google Adsense login" into the live.com search box and click on the sponsored Google result to get to my adsense account!
This way Microsoft makes a few and google loses a few at the same time :)
IMO the problem stems from the add-on toolbars. Many people have 3 or 4 toolbars for search, aol, yahoo, Google in addition to the built one for IE7.
They really don't know how they got there or how to remove them. It is a bit embarrassing but my last girlfriend actually types google.com into the yahoo searchbox to get to google where she searches for the dot-com she is looking for.
It would seem that as domain names get more and more complex (with the reduction in availability of easy to remember and the introduction of new TLD)that searching for sites and using bookmarks will only increase.
Even with modest internet speeds it often ends up quicker to search and then click through rather than re-typing misspelled URLs.
Advances in the URL entry field to do auto complete from search engine results may result in a merging of the two concepts.
It has nothing to do with avoiding spam or viruses or malware. Remember, these are the same folks that are still opening unknown email attachments. They aren't savvy enough to avoid phishing sites.
Don't underestimate the user.
When she searches Amazon.com and gets something else in the top 2-3, she wants to know what that something else is, and why it ranks for her Amazon search. Perhaps there is something better than Amazon.com that other people know about, and she wants to know about that, too.
Even if the top 5 are amazon.com URLs, she may scan them to see what Google is suggesting is hot at Amazon.com, along the way to whatever she was after. Maybe there is something cool at Amazon she doesn't yet know about, and she wants to know about that,too.
The path to Amazon.com via Google is a richer experience for her than the direct navigation path, without much cognitive overhead and without much perceived risk.
If the search engine earns a reputation for abusing the results set (with ads or paid placement) she will go away. Don't underestimate the power of Google's "Ph.D." reputation amongst her and her regular-folk peers. They have ben granted tremendous authority.
Ah, The Truth About Web Navigation:
http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/010453.html
In short, yes. People are lazy. They don't get this stuff at all. They just want to get their stuff done and go on to doing non-computer stuff.
Richard, there really are stupid users. They can be trained, but they don’t want to be trained. They’re happy being terrified of their Windows computers. It’s learned helplessness.
Nonetheless, you’re right: Firefox and Opera make at least reasonable attempts to figure out what you really mean no matter what you type into the address bar. Safari is of course a complete failure in that regard. IE I couldn’t care less about.
Joe:
Are they "stupid" or merely people who have other priorities in life?
Seriously...
I admit I search for site names occasionally when I'm tired or when I'm unsure of the URL and want to avoid landing on a bad site.
But have you ever looked at Google Trends graphs for searches for Google properties. GMail, for instance. A lot of people still search for GMail on Google. http://www.google.com/trends?q=gmail Used to be much higher until they added a Gmail link at the top of the page.
Now that seems completely strange to me... searching Google for something on Google. Then again, the / is in an awkward pinkie stroke on the keyboard.
Marshall,
We could possibly be over-analyzing it too much and instead it is that users type URLs into the search bar as a result of intuition as the search results will then open up in a new tab or new instance of the browser, and the user then only needs to click on the top result.
Often times, users want to keep their existing browser window contents and simply want to open up their next destination in another tab/window, and the perceived faster way seems to typing it into a search bar rather than going into File->New Window/Tab or clicking on a tiny New Window/Tab (assuming they even know it exists).
This behavior is what RealNames built its business on. In Q1 2002 we were around 1 billion RealNames queries per quarter. Users navigated if there was a single match (like "I feel lucky") and got search results if there was more than one match.
Microsoft, in their wisdom, and in a desire to move to "search", turned RealNames off in July 2002. Interesting to think what Microsoft's search market share would be now if they left it in place.
:-)
nostalgically yours
Keith teare
I don't need to type PlentyOfFish's URL into the address bar. Why? I can click through the link in this article, then click from my history, answer through links in participants' emails or through registration emails from POF, maybe use some sort of plugin for Firefox or social networking sites...I probably don't even need to bookmark it. The navigation is served to me on a platter.
Just like #1 up there - whenI tell me mum about a site, she asks "how do I get it in to the google?"
bless her :)
Like a few other commenters already alluded to, it's very simple: The casual user is embarrassed to find URL's of "certain" websites in the drop down list of the address bar, especially if it shared with others in the house/office. Navigating thru their home page search page eliminates that embarrassing URL in the drop down list.
Good questions brought up in this article, and good thoughts by commenters. Richard's idea above about scrapping the address bar is brilliant. I envision a drop down of relative sites and results as you type in the address bar. Similar to Google's and Yahoo's keyword suggest.
@Joe
Agreed there are some "stupid users" out there, but they should seen as an opportunity to do better.
These people actually want to achieve something online and they make up a large percentage of the market. It's in our best interests to make the "stupid users" web experience as painless, productive and enjoyable as possible.
Wait, it gets worse. In fact, many people are not aware of the fact that different web site exist. When they find something on the net, they think they found it "somewhere in Google". Domain names are thus simply a rough equivalent of Google sub-directories.
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