Shopping online has become a daunting venture in today’s electronic world. Every search gives us literally millions of results, leaving us with the seemingly impossible task of scrolling through them to find what we are looking for. This article hopes to give you some ideas on how to narrow your searches down to find the most relevant results. It’s a longer article than usual, but all of it is useful information.
Browsers, Engines, and Search Terms, Oh My!
Imagine going shopping on one street (the Internet), finding a handful of gigantic buildings (Internet browsers), walking down thousands of aisles (search engines), and turning every which direction (search terms) just to find the one thing you are looking for — not even knowing what it’s called because you don’t know what’s available. That is the best analogy for shopping online today.
It’s great that we have everything available in one place, but overwhelming that it all seems disorganized and visible at once. Let’s see if we can make some sense of it and figure out how to find a great meditation cushion.
Internet Browsers
There is a difference between an Internet browser and a search engine. Browsers are software applications that read the language of websites — specifically HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) — and convert it into the visual page you’re looking at right now. The four most popular browsers are Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Mozilla Firefox. Search engines work inside these browsers. Read more about Internet browsers here.
Search Engines
Search engines are complex applications used to find websites on the Internet. They use a process called “crawling” to read every word and gather every image on each website, then use sophisticated algorithms to determine what the website is about and establish its relevance. This is a monumental task — there are over 1 billion websites, and many of them try to manipulate the algorithms to rank higher. For the purpose of this article, I’ll refer most often to Google, which accounts for more than 80% of daily searches. Read more about how Google Search works here.
Search Terms
The bread and butter of any search engine is the search term — a word, phrase, question, or any string of characters representing what you’re trying to find. A quick note about autocorrect: it tends to change “Meditation” to “Mediation” (removing the first “T”). If you’re getting strange results, check that autocorrect hasn’t changed your intended word. This becomes even more relevant when searching for terms like “zafu” and “zabuton.”
Spelling matters, but search engines are good at recognizing common misspellings and suggesting corrections. A helpful trick: on a tablet or smartphone, tap the microphone icon near the keyboard and speak the word you want to type. Your device will spell it correctly for you.
Search Term Strategies
When searching for something you know little about, start broad. This helps you learn the right terminology and lets the search engine’s suggested terms guide you. For example, if you’re looking for a round meditation cushion but can’t remember what it’s called (it’s called a Zafu), start with “meditation” and then narrow to “meditation cushions” or “meditation pillows.” Results will introduce you to terms like Zafu, Zabuton, and specialized designs like the Cosmic Cushion.
You can narrow further by adding descriptive words — shapes, colors, or even locations. For example, “sage green round meditation cushion Canada” will produce very specific results.
When shopping, click the Images tab rather than the Shopping tab. Images give you rich visual information and product names. The Shopping tab is limited to paid advertising, which can cause you to miss useful results.
Managing Search Results
There are two types of results: Paid Ads and Organic Results.
Paid Ads are required to be labeled, though the “Ad” label isn’t always easy to spot. In general, listings at the very top of results are ads. There’s nothing wrong with ads — search engines work hard to ensure their relevance. Paid ads operate on a pay-per-click (PPC) model, meaning merchants are charged each time someone clicks their ad. If you want to visit a merchant’s site without costing them a click, you can type their web address directly into the address bar.
Organic results are the most valuable because they have earned their position through relevance — not payment. Search engines like Google have invested billions in ensuring organic results are accurate and trustworthy. While people will always try to game the system, search engines continually refine their algorithms to keep results clean and relevant.
Conclusion
I hope some of this information is helpful when searching for meditation cushions or any other item online. Search engines are always improving, but as long as they earn revenue from advertising and as long as eCommerce businesses like ours depend on them, there will always be some financial influence on how they work. Maybe one day a completely non-profit, ad-free search engine will arise — that’s a dream that may never come true, but one can always hope.
0 comments