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How do people use search engines?
When people in a business start thinking about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay per Click (PPC) or Social Media (SM) they generally start by thinking how it can benefit the business.
That, of course makes sense, but some outside in thought is also a good idea – in other words, how do people use search? By starting from the point of view of the person doing the searching you would seem much more likely to create an effective solution.
So, firstly let’s look at how people use search engines.
SM (Facebook, Twitter etc) gets much of the publicity these days but search (and thus SEO and PPC) is still how most people find things on the web. 70% of web users have a search engine as their point of entry. Let’s face it when you want something now, waiting for ‘friends’ to reply just doesn’t cut it.
Having said that, recent research (The Virtuous Circle: The Role of Search and Social Media in the Purchase Pathway, February 2011) shows that social media is important in the purchase process. Friend’s opinions are valued.
Most people still start with search with 86% of them saying it is very important. People say they use it because of the quality and scale of information, habit or the fact that they have always used it, and because it’s easy to use.
In addition quality and depth of information available from search are cited as crucial reasons for using search versus social media.
Research by WebVisible shows that, when it comes to local search, search engines are the number one resource for finding local business information.
| Method | % |
Search engines |
74 |
Print yellow pages |
65 |
Internet yellow pages |
50 |
Traditional newspapers |
44 |
Print white pages |
33 |
Television |
29 |
Consumer review websites |
18 |
Percentages are greater than 100 because respondents were permitted to select more than one answer |
|
However, even though yellow pages still has a large following this research was carried out before Google’s latest changes (see our newsletter: November: Google Places search) and the trend is for greater internet use 78% use the Internet more today to find a local business than they did 2 years ago whilst 52% use directories less.
Other research, at Penn State University, has shown that most search queries can be classified into one of three categories:
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Informational - looking for a specific fact or topic
-
Navigational – looking for a specific web site
-
Transactional - looking to buy a particular product or service
The research showed that about 80 percent of queries are informational and about 10 percent each are for navigational and transactional purposes.
Search results
When it comes to search results everyone “knows” that searchers favour organic results over paid links, and are less likely to look beyond the first three pages of search engine results. These findings were confirmed in the iProspect Blended Search Results Study by Jupiter Research.
According to this 70% of web users said they normally click on a link in the first page of results, while 92% chose a website from the first three pages. Over 90% will change the search term if they can’t find what they are looking for in the first three pages and 23% will start another search after looking at just the first page.
Research from De Vos & Jansen in conjunction with Checkit, has shown that people searching to buy viewed more search results and were more concerned with brands than information searchers.
Although restricted to searches for loans, a second-hand car, car insurance, airline tickets and an mp3-player it produced some interesting results:
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98% viewed organic results
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95% looked at the sponsored results at the top
-
31% the sponsored results on the right
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9.2 search results were viewed before the first click. 6.6 organic and 2.6 sponsored at the top of the page.
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Searchers looking to buy viewed more results, 9.9 on average compared with 8.5 for information seekers.
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10.4 seconds was spent on a page to view the search results. Organic results were viewed for 8.8 seconds and the sponsored results at the top and on the right were viewed for 2 and 0.2 seconds respectively.
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Buyers spent more time viewing results, 11.4 seconds compared with 9.4 seconds for searchers.
Why people click
The same research from De Vos & Jansen found seven main motives as to why people click on or avoid a search result and these give some real clues as to what to put in your page titles and meta descriptions as well as your PPC adverts:
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Familiarity and reliability. I know and trust your brand – especially for ‘transactional/buyers’.
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Keyword(s) used in the query in the search result – especially for ‘informational’.
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Position in the search results. The search engine is “telling me” to trust you.
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The opportunity to read user experiences or to compare different products.
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Indirect price information such as references to ‘low costs’.
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Variety of products – “…even if you don’t have exactly what I want…”.
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Consumers seem to avoid results with "aggressive advertising".
Finally, research at NYU indicates that the presence of both organic and paid search listings has a positive benefit on click through and conversion rates:
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Click through rates were up an average of 5.1% when both paid and organic results were present.
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Conversion rates increased by 11.7%, when both were visible, compared to when only organic appeared.
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54% of the total growth in revenue generated due to both ads being present was provided by paid search.
Written by Richard Hill
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