by AJ George
When it comes to learning over the internet, there's been a lot of debate in the industry over the name "eLearning." People can't decide if they should use e-Learning, eLearning, virtual classes or online classes. Others are wondering if they should use the "e" in eLearning at all.
There are plenty of opinions when it comes to the debate. However, opinions are like cell phones, and these days, everybody's got one. To add some fact to opinion, I recently ran a Google Trend search to find out what the everyday Google searcher was using when looking for training via the internet.
I compared eLearning, e-learning, virtual training and online classes.
I found that eLearning, e-learning, and online classes were all on pretty equal footing. It seems that eLearning gets the most hits and is gradually gaining momentum. On the other hand, the phrase "virtual training" was rarely searched.
Once upon a time e-learning was a hot buzz-word, but that was back in 2004. During the past six years, the dash in e-Learning is becoming obsolete. In fact, there has been talk of dropping the "e" in eLearning altogether.
If you compare a Google search for learning to the above search phrases, learning blasts them all out of the water. Of course the problem with searching for the word "learning" is that it is a very broad and commonly-used word. Unless you work for Moodle, chances are that if you brand your training content simply as "learning," your customers may never find you.
I also took the Google Trend tracking a bit further to compare mobile learning, mLearning and m-learning.
M-learning didn't have enough search volume to even be ranked with the other two terms. Mobile learning dominated to a large degree and mLearning hasn't quite caught on. I'm convinced that over time the use of mLearning will continue to increase. But for now, to increase SEO I would suggest using both mLearning and mobile learning, just to be safe.
Note: I tried the Google Trend search with and without quotes around the two-word terms (ie "mobile learning") and found that it returned similar results either way.
About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Writer and author of the book "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and the just-released "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials." You can follow AJ on Twitter at http://twitter.com/andrayajgeorge.
how about “Distributed learning”? any comparison on that?
how about “Distributed learning”? any comparison on that?
how about “Distributed learning”? any comparison on that?
Hi Robert,
I re-did the Google trend search that I did before on eLearning, etc and added “distributed learning” into the mix. Compared to the other terms it didn’t even show up in the ranking.
I thought it might just be low compared to the other terms, so I ran a trend search on “distributed learning” on its own, but it still came up as saying it did not have a high enough search volume to produce graphs.
Hi Robert,
I re-did the Google trend search that I did before on eLearning, etc and added “distributed learning” into the mix. Compared to the other terms it didn’t even show up in the ranking.
I thought it might just be low compared to the other terms, so I ran a trend search on “distributed learning” on its own, but it still came up as saying it did not have a high enough search volume to produce graphs.
Hi Robert,
I re-did the Google trend search that I did before on eLearning, etc and added “distributed learning” into the mix. Compared to the other terms it didn’t even show up in the ranking.
I thought it might just be low compared to the other terms, so I ran a trend search on “distributed learning” on its own, but it still came up as saying it did not have a high enough search volume to produce graphs.
I’m presuming you used Google Insights to compare the key phrases
I’m presuming you used Google Insights to compare the key phrases
I’m presuming you used Google Insights to compare the key phrases
I used Google Trends–found at http://www.google.com/trends
I used Google Trends–found at http://www.google.com/trends
I used Google Trends–found at http://www.google.com/trends