Search Analytics: Conversations With Your Customers. But is it really a conversation? I mean we'd like it to be, but is it? I asked Lou the other day about the title of the book and it went a little something like this...

A conversation (usually) means that one person is doing the talking while another is doing the listening, and when it your turn you switch positions. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not, but it's a two-way communication activity. What I see (not on my projects of course), but know that happens most often with search data s that no one, rarely if ever, even looks at the data, let alone take any action on it. Why I'll never understand, but it's true. Sad, but true.

Do you recall ever being lectured by you parents when you were young, or being in a lecture hall in college? Those weren't conversations, they were one-way communications. They said something, maybe you listened, I recall them being quite like listening to Charlie Brown's teacher, Mrs. Donovan, which sounded like a trombone with a plunger used as a mute. So, I ask you. Is SSA really a conversation, or is it a 'confession'?

What is a confession really? Assuming your not a priest, it's an acknowledgment, an avowal, an admission, and/or a disclosure from one person to another that doesn't require the other person to respond. Written within all these confessions your users/customer/clients/etc. are telling you their needs, their desires, what they can’t find, what is frustrating them, etc. And the best and most juiciest part of every single confession is.. it is in their own language! No guessing, no paying for more research studies, it's all right there in 'black & white' just waiting for you to absolve them of their issues.

Now, if you come full circle with these juicy morsels and apply these great insights you've discovered from those confessions , i.e. take action on them, then there might be grounds for calling it a conversation.

So what's you take on this? A Conversation or a Confession?