A while back I talked about the frustrations of explaining my line of work to my relatives, but I'm starting to think that maybe ignorance truly is bliss. I recently heard two examples of non-search people's perceptions about how the search engines work, and it is frustrating to think that some people believe that this is actually how the search industry operates.

The first example came from Rand, who told me that a bunch of people he knows who work at a retail company said that they don't believe search engines drive real traffic, and that "no one buys online" because "the consumer isn't invested enough to make a purchase decision." Obviously, we search marketers know that both claims are downright ridiculous. Anyone with an analytics program installed can plainly see that search engines do indeed drive traffic to your site (SEOmoz has received ~20% of its traffic from various search engines thus far for the month of September).

As for the belief that nobody buys online, this ClickZ study from March 2006 shows at least 37% of buyers converted online for overall purchases, with 63% offline conversions, meaning that at the very least some amount of research was made online that influenced their offline purchase decision. Furthermore, iProspect released a study last month stating that 39% of searchers make a purchase after being driven to search from an offline medium. Clearly, people are buying products online, and those that aren't are still doing research online before making offline purchases or are being driven online from offline influence. To think that no website is able to drive a user to make a purchase decision online is simply preposterous and ridiculous; if that were true, there would be no Amazon, eBay, add to carts, PayPal, not to mention millions of other retail-based websites. None of them would exist. Since this is obviously not the case, one would logically assume that someone out there is making purchases online, right?

The second example, believe it or not, is even worse. A friend of mine works for a company that is shifting its focus from solely selling traditional radio to that of an Internet company that also has some radio stations. Recently he and his coworkers had a meeting with an upper member of regional management. This man outlined how the company's partnership with Google will allow them to "take advantage of Google's auction model" and allow for additional advertising revenue from smaller companies that don't traditionally have enough money to do business with them.

Here's where you should be thinking, "What the hell is Google's auction system?" And this was the man's explanation (keep in mind that this guy is a higher up in the company, and he's telling an entire team of people this):

According to him, Google has been able to take advantage of the long tail model by utilizing an auction system that charges everybody. It doesn't price anyone completely out of the picture, and it's automated in such a way that they can profitably conduct transactions for $50 (or even $5 or $10) because they are, after all, a huge search engine displaying hundreds of results for millions of search terms. His example of how Google's "auction system" works was that if you want your page to show up in Google, you need to pay, say, $30 to be listed on maybe the 200th page, but you can increase your bid and show up on the 7th or 8th page, and you can pay even more to show up on the first page of results. However, Mr. Upper Member of Regional Management made it quite clear that you can't buy the first search result on Google because "Google needs to protect their product's integrity and preserve some relevancy with searches."

Dear God. I feel like a movie goer shouting "Don't open that door! The killer's behind there!" at the movie screen. This guy actually believes that the organic rankings are arranged via a Google-approved bribery system (and yes, he was referring to the organic rankings and not the paid ad platform). If this were the case, do you realize how many PPC (pills, porn, casino) sites would dominate the top of the SERPs (oh sorry, every position but #1, because, after all, Google has a reputation to keep)? Any site with the most money would rank supreme. Does this guy not realize that, logistically, this is an absolutely and wholeheartedly piss poor way to structure a search engine's rankings? Relevance would fly out the window in exchange for cold hard cash. I would imagine that user experience would be extremely negative, and Google certainly wouldn't be the top search engine if they operated on a platform like this.

The absolute worst thing about these examples is that these come from prominent business people who are "educating" uninformed people within their organization. All they're doing is spreading blatant misinformation to their staff, with most of these people being too uneducated or unaware about search to really question what they're being told. I get so frustrated when I hear about instances like the two I just shared. At least with my relatives I can (try to) explain in a basic yet correct way how search engine algorithms work and why they see the results that appear when they perform a search. With misinformed people you have to try and "rehabilitate" them and convince them that yes, search engines actually drive traffic, yes, people actually make purchases online, and no, Google is not essentially a prostitute of a search engine. And this is all too often an uphill battle. Where these people get their crazy ideas is beyond me. I blame MTV.

Sigh. I think I know how Bruce Wayne feels. You save Gotham from peril and not only do you not get a thank you or any sort of appreciation, but some other a-hole breaks out of Arkham Asylum and runs amok, forcing you to have to save the day again.

Basically, what I'm saying is that I think the search industry needs a Commissioner Gordon.