The Not Found Search Principle

I think Social Media providers are missing out on a search related trick. I was on facebook today looking for an old school friend. There were no matches for his name so I was presented with a “we’ll find him for you” type of page. Which sounded great but then I was asked to enter his email address. If I had his email address, or IM or any other details then I wouldn’t be looking for him.

So here’s my advice on a quick and easy way to increase registrations via search. When the user gets to the same page I did – the dead end – I would present them with a form to enter some basic information about the person they are looking for:

• Name: Tucker Jenkins
• Gender: Mr
• Description: Ginger hair, blue eyes, white
• Where you met: Grange Hill School
• Your strongest memory together: Skipping class
• How old were you when you lost touch: 16

That’s probably enough before the member starts getting bored and wonders if this effort is worth it. Then the smart thing for a social media company (like facebook) to do would be to construct a search optimised page centred on the phrase “Tucker Jenkins”. This page – titled Tucker Jenkins – could be presented like a wanted poster if the company felt like getting creative. The main content on the page would be constructed from the user generated information I had input. It could read something like:

“If you are the same [Tucker Jenkins] who was at [Grange Hill School] more than 19 years ago and could be described as [ginger hair, blue eyes, white] then we have a member that wants to get in touch with you. His name is [Bob Sheth] and his fondest memory with you was [skipping class]. If you would like to talk to [Bob] then register now for your account.”

Now put yourself in Tucker’s shoes. It is very likely that he will search for his name in Google one day as most people do. Rather than seeing random lists of all the obscure Tuckers around the world – he sees a message from facebook and clicks on it. In my opinion that click will have a seriously high rate of success and will convert into a new member and more loyalty from a satisfied existing member – a “win-win” situation.

Seeing as I can’t find anyone really applying this method I shall name it the “not found search” principle.

The “not found search” principle can be applied to a lot of other sites and niches. For example let’s take a record store with a typical e-commerce business model. I’m searching the shop and I can’t find an obscure track I’m looking for. Under normal circumstances I don’t have many options apart from bouncing back to Google and looking for another store. Wait – now lets say instead of the dead end again, I was presented with a page which read something like “I’m sorry we don’t stock this track but if you fill out some basic information about it, we will do our best to find and stock it soon”. So I fill the information out and the record store then uses it in a similar fashion to create a user generated page around the “obscure track” term. What makes even more sense is for the record store to create an “out of stock” or a “Pre-order” page for the obscure track and start booking sales for it. So the next time somebody searches for the “Obscure Track” in google there’s a strong chance of them landing on this pre-order page. The net result is a potential new customer who will be very happy (and loyal) when the record store fulfills the order for the obscure track.

A real world example of the “not found search” principle

I applied the “not found search” principle to an e-commerce venture I’m involved with – The Internet Gift Store. It was a rather crude method which was not automated. A number of customers called the sales line asking for a “Rocky Dressing Gown”. Apparently the product had appeared on a popular TV show so there were a few enquiries in a short space of time. We immediately published a pre-order page for the product and a couple of months later the term ranks within the top 3 search results for Rocky Dressing Gown. This has resulted in around 30-40 sales daily for the product and has made a big impact on the small online venture’s business. 

It works, so let’s discuss how you can apply the “not found search” principle to your business model.