Last week I heard Wil Reynolds mention in passing about the instant results when you type “how do I get my husband to…” versus “how do I get my wife to…” in Google.
The results show the giant gulf between men and women and why the two will never understand each other.
I’m not sure what this indicates beyond the obvious, but if you want to kill a few minutes, try out some searches like this where you see what Google instant shows you for the most searched phrases. Another fun one is, “is it illegal to…”
Now, go tell your spouse something nice.
If this kind of thing fascinates you, definitely check out A Billion Wicked Thoughts, a new book out from neuroscientists who studied about 6 billion search queries to identify the patterns of our sexual searches!
The beauty of using Google searches is that research only takes a couple of days! Google processes about 5 billion searches every day (http://www.statisticbrain.com/google-searches/)
This seems to reinforce the value of doing Q&A articles as part of a site’s content marketing rotation, since you know the searchers are looking for an answer or solution that you can provide.
Phil, that makes me wonder — when a blog article is a how-to, is it better for the title to be in the form of the question or the answer? For instance, whether it’s better to use “What’s the best SEO meetup in Raleigh?” or “Best SEO meetup in Raleigh” as the title.
I’m thinking it’s better to use a question in the META title tag (since that’s most visible on SERPs and it’s also most similar to the original query, so that searchers will see more bolded words) and then to use a declarative version as the on-screen article headline (since it reinforces to readers that the article has the answer they wanted), with an enticing teaser about the answer in the description.
I’d love to find some research to confirm or refute the hypothesis. Any suggestions?
Luckily the number one result for either of the queries you mention is the same 🙂
I think the answer is going to be what you determine is the intent of the person looking for your website. If it’s informational, then a question will probably be better – unless it’s a question Google will try to answer on it’s own – For example, “weather in Raleigh today”. In the weather example, WRAL owns the first 3 organic listings, but will always be below the “answer” which is provided by Google.
So I agree that the best hedge is to match with the title tag, maybe have the H1 similar but more declarative and a well thought through meta description.
It looks like not all men are as nefarious as their NC counterparts. The dudes in Colorado just want a little love….
http://i.minus.com/icRmICs62VupZ.JPG
Don’t we all 😉
Very interesting. Look at the CPC on the last one (http://screencast.com/t/o9MTrrbnRdzf) 🙂
Unbelievable! #smh