[Sigia-l] Junk science or just lazy?

[Troy Winfrey]

Kerry Bodine's comment (he's at Forrester) is worth reading at

http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com/announcements/2007/08/user_experience_and_the_analys.php

Most search optimizers know that it's not the frequency of a term that you
need to look at, but its performance in relationship to your business goals.
The "long tail," one of the most important principles for interactive, is
certainly at work here; some terms are much more equal than others, and it's
not always obvious which at first glance.
As Bodine points out, Forrester is targeting managers and other "business"
types, to speak broadly. I suspect that most UX folks are not really the
ones trying to get this research, since as I understand it the overwhelming
majority of people in this tiny field are more functional or operational
than strategic. Even if they are in a managerial role, it's probably in
service of strategic goals and initiatives set by more traditional MBA
types. To justify those initiatives, the MBA needs CYA in the form of costly
research reports. People in agencies or boutique firms may well not fit this
model, but I think it's still pretty relevant. In short: looking at term
frequency doesn't really matter; you need some way of measuring the
importance of a particular term. As an aside, this principle is how Google
revolutionized search engines, and, I'd argue, made all of our lives
possible again after the crash by giving the Web a long-term, robust
business model.