Search Like A Geek Author: Jason OConnor Copyright: 2005

Some people search Web like a Neanderthal standing before Library of Congress steps grunting, “Me want food!” While other, more sophisticated searchers, act more like a person actually entering Library of Congress, approaching librarian, and saying, “Pardon me, please lead me to your books on agriculture and growing food, and while you’re at it, please show me your books on fine dining in Washington D.C. area.”. Who would you rather be?

Back in high school there was ‘in-crowd’, often populated by jocks, and then there were geeks, among other social clicks. Today, many of those ‘geeks’ are wildly successful; while some of those unfortunate others are asking us if we’d like fries with our burgers.

So it’s not so bad being a geek today, especially since so much of our lives and economy are dominated by computers, software and Internet. It is wise to learn how to use Internet as best you can. By understanding how search engines and directories work, like many geeks already do, you will find information you’re looking for more easily, quickly and with a lot less frustration. Knowing how to pinpoint specific bits of information quickly will give you an advantage over most other people who do not have these skills. And this advantage can turn into big money by saving you time in your day to day business. And learning about how to search will help in your search engine optimization efforts if you run your own website too.

So, I invite you to pull up your pants to make high-waters, apply some masking tape to bridge of your eye glasses, and insert a pocket protector in your front shirt pocket, and join me in learning how to search like a geek.

The more appropriate words you use better. Let’s say I want to find tickets to a new Broadway musical show called Wicked next weekend in New York City. If you just type word ‘tickets’ into Google’s search box, you’ll get 99.6 million results, which is very unwieldy. The first result is ticketmaster.com. It took 4 clicks for me to get to their listing of Wicked tickets, but they were out of inventory up to 6 weeks from now, so it was a dead end since I want to go next weekend.

The next result was Tickets.com, and when I searched for Wicked on their site I found tickets available to Wicked in Toronto only. Another dead end, I need tickets to NYC production.

The third result only sold airline and cruise tickets, not what I’m looking for either. After clicking on another 4 websites, I still hadn’t found what I was looking for. I was getting frustrated, impatient and was just about ready to toss my PC out my window and give up totally.

If instead, I used a few more appropriate words in my search, my results would have been much better. I tried typing words ‘new york city broadway wicked musical tickets’ in Google search box and came up with 230,000 results instead of 99 million, which is slightly more manageable.

The first result was www.musicalschwartz.com which offered ‘Ticket Tips - Wicked on Broadway, Seating info’. So I clicked on that and learned a number of things about purchasing Broadway tickets, NYC travel tips and other information on Wicked musical.

As an entrepreneur, I'm always intrigued by small businesses, home-based or not, that exceed expectations of their customers in a big way.

Let me tell you about one of them.

Recently I spent some time with my daughter in her college town of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. We were spending day getting her apartment ready for her return to school in fall. When it was time for lunch, she wanted to take me to a restaurant in small town of Northport, just to north of Tuscaloosa.

Northport is one of those typical southern small towns whose downtown area has been converted into a delightfully quaint shopping area. Central to it is a restaurant called City Cafe.

What an experience.

We arrived at location at 11:30 a.m. Typically I like going to restaurants for lunch at that time so that one can "beat rush." I commented on this to my daughter before we arrived; she just laughed.

When we walked in, I understood why. I faced a room with

1) a lunch counter to left (full) 2) booths to right (full) and 3) a line that stretched all way to back wall and then circled around.

Like visitors to Disney World, we automatically took our place at end of line. Then I began to look toward front of line and realized that it continued on into another room (which I couldn't see). So I asked my daughter, "where is FRONT of this line?"

Her response - "you'll see."

Sheesh!

So I began to look around at diners surrounding me. Their plates were piled high with what can only be described as "down home Southern cooking." And diners themselves? A quick glance around room told me that this establishment attracted customers from every walk of life. At this moment, however, they all had one thing in common - serious business of eating.

Meanwhile, aroma was making my mouth water. So I turned my attention back to ultimate end of line. When would I have my turn?