Google® Business Solutions All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter 3. Understanding How Your Customers Use Google

In This Chapter

• Examining how people really search

• Using the different types of searches

• Searching outside of Google

• Pinpointing your key search terms

There's an old riddle that captures some of the uncertainty of life: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Or, in the case of your Web presence: Which is more important — your Web site or the effort to help people find your Web site?

The answer to this question can be found in another riddle: What are the three most important things in business? Location, location, location. Similarly, online, the three most important things are: Being found, being found, being found. Helping people find your Web site, then, takes precedence over the site itself. So, in this book, we describe how searching works and then investigate what this implies for your Web presence. Then, in Book IV, we describe how to create a Web site that includes search-friendliness.

Google Search is the key to the success of Google. Having watched Google from its very beginnings, we understand just how much better it has always been than anything else out there, and how much users and the entire Internet-based economy depend on Google Search.

Getting good results from Google Search can be absolutely critical for your business — or it can be merely very important.

Understanding How People Really Search

The practice of making a Web site work better with Google Search is called search engine optimization, or SEO. The common ...