Tracy, Paul and Mary

I have found an interesting article on User Behaviour in Paid Search by George Michie. He identificates three different profiles based on their behaviour in using search engines:

• Trademark Tracy aka Brand is the one who normally search for brand names, stores and marks (e.g. "Harrod's");
• Yellow Page Paul aka Head is the one who normally runs generic queries, more interested in a category of product, rather than in a specific brand, as if he is looking at the Yellow Pages (e.g. "sportswear");
• Modern Mary aka Tail, instead, is the most focused one, who looks for a very specific product, using long tail keywords (e.g. "red striped swimsuit with co-ordinate sarong").

I find this classification really funny but quite accurate as well.

Sometimes online marketers struggle to find a way to increase sales using well converting keywords, even if recent studies show that in most cases what we see is just the emerged parts of the iceberg, not its entire shape. For example, even if the CTR for generic keywords (the ones that Paul is looking at) is high and they score a low conversion rate, it doesn't mean they are "evil" and unnecessary in an AdWords account. 

Google normally assures that generic keywords are the first queries that a user searches online and only after seeing our ads he decides to purchase on our website. Sometimes, though, these generic keywords are crucial to any e-commerce website in assisting the final conversion.

Every web marketer must be conscious of this and should always take into account the fact that both Tracy, Paul and Mary are all inside the panel of users to refer to.