Don’t let search own you

I’ve been circling around this topic for some time now. I’m not speaking as an expert on the subject. I’m not talking SEO. What I’m getting at has to do with users and the practice of working search effectively.

In many ways what I’m advocating is developing query skills that effectively cancel out SEO tactics. Can anybody argue that SEO tactics are not designed to take advantage of bad search habits? The challenge is that results returned even on sloppy searches are often useful.

And that’s where users, myself included, can be highly ineffective. It’s kind of a paradoxical situation because we’ll never really recognize the limitations that bad search habits deliver. Instead, our hair trigger click through habits will send us off to consume some result, usually from the first page returned.

As I try to break through the container erected by my own bad search habits, here’s a few strategies I’ve been practicing.

• I consider each initial search phrase a rough draft.

• I consider results from pages 2-5 and then pick a random page number, like 37.

• I try out Bollean operators and consider if the results produced are are more effective or not.

• I place a high value on every search box I come across. That includes on blogs, in e-mail, Friendfeed, Twitter, Google Reader, etc.

The challenge I’m trying to point out here is that like a compass, search is a tool we can navigate by. My fear is that we tend to head off in the direction the needle is pointing. I think the future will most likely be “owned” through lazy search habits, with the masses following the direction the needle points.

But I also sense there will be a minority who will develop advanced practices. These few will operate on a completely different plane even though they are using the exact same tool. They will effectively navigate though the compounding oceans of information, having mastered the art of the query.  My sense is that these masters are already active, and they are focused on how to cut the deck and read the huge pools of data already forming each moment with the live web.