[IxDA Discuss] SEO and Usability

[Fred Beecher]

On Thu, 3 Jan 2008 13:12:11, dave malouf <dave at ixda.org> wrote:
>
> Machines and humans will NEVER have the same complete set of usability
> needs (if you will).


No, not the same complete set... of course! I'm simply talking about the
task of finding relevant information.

SEO's sole goal is to index. Human's have many goals when it comes
> to information and thus their mental models for how to deal with that
> information will shift dramatically away from the type of goals that
> are programmed into search engines.


Yes, humans have many goals about why they want a piece of information and
will consume it in different ways and take different actions based upon
it... but in order to do any of that they have to find it first.

I would modify your statement to say that SEO's main goal is to get stuff
found. Humans, while we may have larger macro-goals, will inevitably have at
least a micro-goal of "finding relevant information," ESPECIALLY in the
context of the Web. Google's macro-goal is "finding relevant information,"
and to do that it does its best to mimic how humans determine relevance: a)
do lots of other humans think it's relevant? b) does it mention the topic
(keyword) a lot? c) does the topic (keyword) appear in places that are
supposed to communicate relevance to humans? And so on...

F.