People really do use Google in place of their address bar. Users sometimes call me at work because they can’t find heraldtribune.com despite a specific URL provided in the newspaper, such as http://www.heraldtribune.com/building.

The /building part isn’t recognized by Google. So when Joe User types the redirect into the Google search instead of into their address bar, they’re lost. Obviously, some work on our end is needed to get that fixed.

I digress. The real reason for mentioning this nagging problem at all is a story in the The Post that suggests it might affect Google’s annual list of most-searched-for terms. Topping the list this year were “Bebo” and “MySpace.”

Were people looking for information about these sites or were they actually trying to get to them? My gut tells me there’s something wrong with the Google-as-navigation argument in this case. Without exception, every person who calls me, lost in cyberspace, is a senior citizen. Aren’t users of social networking sites savvy enough to know how to use an address bar? Probably.

But neither Bebo nor MySpace have organized advertising campaigns. New users are rarely or never provided a URL to go check out. They hear the name from a friend or on the news. If I’d heard of MySpace for the first time, then typing the name into Google seems like a good first step toward finding it.

Perhaps most of those searches were potential first-time users of Bebo and MySpace.

Demonstrates how important it is that your site come up as the first result whenever a user is looking for your site. That’s solid SEO. Nevermind about all those related keywords. The most important keyword is the name of your site.