{"id":348,"date":"2007-03-03T18:39:06","date_gmt":"2007-03-04T01:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pdxtc.com\/wpblog\/archives\/348"},"modified":"2014-12-04T13:39:01","modified_gmt":"2014-12-04T20:39:01","slug":"1998-search-engine-article","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pdxtc.com\/wpblog\/computers-how-to\/1998-search-engine-article\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Use a Search Engine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Someone just sent me an email about a search engine article I wrote in 1998. It was a short article where I tried to explain what a search engine was, and how to use one. Funny enough, their question was similar to the one that sparked the original article.<\/p>\n<p>Like most of my articles back then, it started as an email response to a customer question. This one happened to be  from someone trying to find something using a search engine, and todays question was about being FOUND, on the engines. Still, the answers were remarkably similar.<\/p>\n<p>In the article, I say this &#8211;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">In May of 1994, my wife and I decided to  buy a house. Being semi-savvy on the computer, I thought I would try to search  the Web for listings. I went to my preferred search engine site, and typed in  &#8220;houses sale Portland Oregon.&#8221; I got back only three matches.  Today, that same query, on that same search engine, gets exactly 60,681 matches.<\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Today, that same search phrase brings up 1,290,00 results.  Uh-oh&#8230; looks like growth is slowing way down! In my first 4 years online, there was a growth factor of over 20,000 times. In the subsequent 4 years, going from 60,000 to 1.2 million, it only grew only 20 times.<\/p>\n<p>In the article,  I explained that to find what you wanted as a customer, you just had to tell the search engines exactly what you want.  Today, I tell people that to be found by your customers, you just have to give them exactly what they&#8217;re looking for.<\/p>\n<p>What will i do for a living once everyone finally figures it out?<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.pdxtc.com\/199804-searchengines.htm\">The original article is still here<\/a>, if you want a taste of search nostalgia&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Someone just sent me an email about a search engine article I wrote in 1998. It was a short article where I tried to explain what a search engine was, and how to use one. Funny enough, their question was similar to the one that sparked the original article. Like most of my articles back [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers-how-to","category-seo-101"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>How to Use a Search Engine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Someone just sent me an email about a search engine article I wrote in 1998. 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