Hacker News Reader

Comment by psykovsky | Hacker News Reader

That is not surprising at all. Most of people who use the Internet on mobile don't even now what a browser is, much less a domain name. They search every site they want to visit, even if they just needed to add .com to their search term to open the site straight away in the browser. The "Internet" is the google search box.

View on HN

It could also be because the interface on mobile is significantly worse than on a desktop. Just doing a search, by typing into the already active text box, is easier than trying to navigate to the URL bar, hitting the wrong keys and getting the URL wrong. It's easier to just do a search and let Google work it out.

Honestly I'm surprised how many how almost exclusively use their phone to go online. It's seems like a huge step backwards in usability.

My wife is one of those people and one day I asked her why she goes for her phone instead of her tablet when she wants to look something up. It's because she is already on her phone most of the time, because after work she spends hours messaging with her friends. (I can't even sit near her when she's doing this because she doesn't turn off the buzzer and it's super annoying to be around.) She spends many, many hours looking at that little screen.

Personally, the less I have to interact with my limited phone, the better. I use it mainly for 4 things: calls, sms, maps and music. Once in a while, I use it to read the news when I'm not near an actual computer (or tablet). Occasionally, I use specialized apps like Amazon AWS Virtual MFA. Other than that, I just can't stand to use it for anything.

How does this affect advertisements and click rates? Often times I am presented with two results which are correct - one promoted (ad) and one search result. If I click the promoted one I am contributing to the advertisement's click through metrics. If more people are using google as their navigation aid, is the ad value still as important? Could facebook or other top services be paying $$$ in advertisement fees simply because people don't want to add ".com" to their query?

Depends if its a brand or non brand search - plus there is the issue of brand spillage.

I have written a tool to help our PC team manage our clients accounts so they don't waste the PPC budget

Navigational search queries (e.g. brand or site names) should usually be added as negative keywords in Adwords campaigns. This prevents your ads from being served for those keywords. To answer your question, ads are still very valuable for some types of searches - primarily those that are non-navigational in nature e.g. "personal injury lawyer + [city name]".

I wonder how many googles they get for google.

I guess a lot of them. I've seen it live, and I don't get out much.

A lot, probably. If you look at google.com/trends there are two countries that have a 'most searched' graph, Belgium and The Netherlands. Google has a fourth place in Belgium and a third place in The Netherlands.

God is this true. My girlfriend just types 'facebook' into the URL bar, then clicks on Facebook.com. I don't understand it.

http://jokes.christiansunite.com/Men_vs._Women/At_the_ATM_Ma...

So she navigates to facebook in 9 taps (facebook + select), while you get there in 16 (www.facebook.com)? Sounds to me like she's the one in the know.

No, he (like most of us) types `f` and the browser autocompletes.

Also my keyboard has a .com button, and I don't have to wait for two webpages to load, just one ;)

There is occasionally a valid reason to do this.

Lets say you are not sure of the url. Maybe you are looking to sign up for an account at actualwebsite.com but the real url is actualwebsiteinc.com, you're really better off searching for "actualwebsite" and clicking the 1st link google gives you.

Don't dump your girlfriend, she might be ok in the long run.

Indeed, I think the simplicity of a single search box is so alluring compared to typing out a URL - to many, it's basically their idea vision of a computer as "the device that can answer your questions".

It's somewhat unfortunate, because the Internet is so much more than only what can be found via Google.

Without google the internet would basically be just following links and word of mouth. Far more of the internet is accessible due to search engines.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com