Hacker News Reader

Comment by raquo | Hacker News Reader

> According to Web traffic analysts, people type Match.com into Google and then click the top result. Are these people stupid? No, they're smart: It takes a lot of work to remember every company's exact domain name

Yeah, it takes a lot to remember the domain match.com, that's why people go to google and type there match.com

From my experience, people do it because 1) they have no clue about the address bar, or 2) google is their home page and when they open their browser the focus is set automatically on the google's <input> element rather than on the location bar.

View on HN

My wife told me that some of her coworkers will use their Yahoo homepage to search for Google, and from there they will search for Facebook. She even tried to teach them about the address bar, and they don't care.

I think for many people it doesn't really matter if there is a better way. They find a way to get what they want, and as long as they can remember that, there's no need to think about it anymore.

"My wife told me that some of her coworkers will use their Yahoo homepage to search for Google, and from there they will search for Facebook. She even tried to teach them about the address bar, and they don't care."

This is my new facebook status. Pure win!

They can also do it to avoid phishing scam. Like logging on to credit card company site, I trust google to deliver the right domain for me.

Sure, but they're talking about average web users

I do this fairly reguarlly. I often miss type domain names, but when I do this in google they will correct me.

I do this a lot, too. I guess this is like "Just type in the AOL keyword, and boom, you're there!", except it's Google keyword. :)

I'd compare it more to Paul Buccheit's gmail story, where users kept asking for a compose button but actually wanted a faster interface. What users say and mean are two different things.

Or, it's because it's easier to think about one entry box than two. I don't think I'm stupid, but I tend to use the google search box almost exclusively - half the time I'm doing a search, and that's what I want; the other half of the time I'm going to a top-level domain, and I get there almost as quickly via Google.

Why would I want to waste brain time deciding which box to type in if Google will do the right thing either way?

(and about 1% of the time I'm constructing a URL to a test server on localhost. Then I use the address bar - for some reason, google seems to give much poorer results for localhost URLs.)

Sometimes it's less difficult. For example, it took me a while to remember that the HN search engine is at searchyc.com. And sometimes it's faster: I can get to my uni's website by googling just keio instead of typing www.keio.ac.jp.

I think his point was that the example in the article makes little sense -- if you're typing "match.com" into Google you clearly haven't forgotten that the domain name is "match.com" ... You probably just don't know that you can type it in the address bar.

The example would have made more sense if the author had said people type "Facebook" looking for "Facebook.com"

I think when people refer to Match.com they say "Match.com" and when people refer to facebook they refer to "Facebook".

I find the searchyc plugin helpful: http://plugin.searchyc.com/

I have it mapped to "yc" so I can hit command+L then type "yc some query"

In defense of the user ...... sometimes the user may not know the exact domain name and a google search makes more sense.

To extend the TalkingPointsMemo example used in the article,consider the fact that the TalkingPointsMemo logo says "TPM". A user who has heard about tpm will be better off typing in "tpm.com" in their search bar. The second google result is for the talking points memo website. oth typing in tpm.com will take you to some other company's website

This may be a big win for Chrome, actually. If everyone normally just uses google anyway, the address bar and google's search have the opportunity to merge.

More traffic to google, more ad dollars. I guess internet explorer is in the same position, but somehow I can't see Microsoft moving in that direction. Maybe I'm wrong.

I've found I sometimes type domain names into the search box just because my fingers are better trained to use "Ctrl-K" than "Ctrl-L" or "Meta-D". Especially since "Ctrl-K" is pretty cross platform, while shortcuts for the location bar vary by OS and browser.

none of those hotkeys work on mac safari. cmd-L is location bar and cmd-opt-f for search

CMD+L TAB might get you there quicker. Just sayin'.

that's because we are so used to the firefox search bar where it'll fill in what you were looking for as you type

Reply on news.ycombinator.com