Published on June 12, 2012

Recommended by former Transactions editor Jo Mackiewicz —

Killoran’s surveyed 240 principals in technical communication businesses, interviewed half of them, and analyzed their websites to determine the extent to which they tried to reach prospective clients via the intermediary of search engines. He found that search engines help businesses but that pursuing the “audience of robots” requires investments many business principals hesitate to make. This robust study adds to our understanding of both web findability and to technical communication as a business.

J. B. Killoran. “Targeting an audience of robots: Search engines and the marketing of technical communication business websites.” IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, vol. 52, no. 3, pp.254-271, 2009.

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