Alec East

I’ve worked directly with the internet for over 14 years and, as a result, I am what you might call a “power user”. It’s normal for me  browse several windows at the same time, construct complex searches and automatically know which keyboard commands will skip me through pages, so it’s easy to forget that most people use the internet very, very differently.

My wife is a typical example of normal web-user behaviour; someone who goes to Google and searches for a brand name (Hotmail/MySpace/Nike/Amazon etc) and clicks the resulting link. I’d even say that most people start their journey at a search engine and rarely, if ever, type a URL or domain name into the browser. Google/Yahoo/MSN etc have become the primary gateway to the web for most users.

Hitwise recently published search analysis that, unsurprisingly, showed  media and retailers dominating the list of most searched for brands in the UK with Facebook in pole position.  The most popular searches will, obviously, create the most visited sites so Google is now your new URL. Brand becomes king and a findable site (SEO & SEM) has become fundamental if you want to drive traffic to your site.