[IxDA Discuss] SEO and Usability

[Alan Wexelblat]

I think one of the reasons people use Google as a shortcut to find
things on other sites is that it drastically lowers the learning and
memory costs.  It's one technique that works the same across all
sites, whether it's a shopping site like buy.com or a news site like
cnn.com.  Each site has a different (often radically different) way of
sorting and presenting its information.  From the user's point of view
the choice is either to learn and try to remember each site's way of
doing things - the varied IAs - or just learn one way and use it
everywhere.

I think it's a completely rational and understandable decision for
users to pick option #2.

--Alan