Search Behaviour - Research Update - SES London 2006 Session

I have a very busy schedule here in London, so I may not catch many panels - but here is one!

Chris Sherman introduces the panel:

Jonty Kelt - Managing Director of UK and Europe - Performics
Bob Ivins - Managing Direct - ComScore
Elizabeth Van Couvering - London School of Economics
Graham Hansell - Head of Search Strategy - SiteLynx

Graham & Elizabeth Co-Present their presentation on “Search in the Zone”:

Intro:

• Search is not a very significant amount of user’s online activity
• Somewhere between 1.5% & 15% of online activity goes to Search.
• 15% of people don’t use search engines at all

The Web is different for everyone

In a 3 year study of nearly 600 representative Web users with 192,000 websites visited only 66.8% of websites were visited by only one person.

She presents a chart detailing:

Home Zone: Where people spend most of their time (Yahoo, Google, Intranet, etc) in routine behavioral patterns.
Neighborhood Zone: Sites users are familiar with and use occasionally, but know hot to get there. This is your known part of the web.
Unknown Zone: This is everything else that you are not aware of.

The user experience is focused on the known zones. When you’re on a routine session in the home zone, 1 in ten times, you might use a search engine to follow it up. The neighborhood zone is often accessed by bookmarks, memory etc, in 66% of the time, but the other 34% of the time, it’s characterized by the use of search. However, the Unknown Zone is accessed 74% of them time, via search.

The Home & Neighborhood zone represents up to 80% of the user online activity, but only about 10% of the sites that will be accessed.

Search is a “choke point” of the web. The top websites are very accessible and well known, but the rest of the web is only accessible 50% of the time, by search engines – the rest is branding, links, etc.

Getting your site in the zone:

• Transactional sites need to be high up in Search
• Being both listed high up & in a wide variety of searches in important
• In the research phase of Discovery it can be important to have “positive reviews” listed higher than your site
• Publishers need to get into the Home of Neighbourhood
Graham emphasizes the use of RSS feeds to allow you to drag your content into the Home Zone of the user and get the user to go directly to you and recognizing the brand.

Bob takes the podium next.

“More Searchers Searching More”

ComScore conducts passive tracking of actual consumer search activity.

According to Bob, there are 700 million people online, but that number is underestimated. Those people are spending :

95% on Portals & 87% on Search

By doing a little math, according to Bob - there are 33 Billion Searches per month.

He does a nice little comparison of Search to Email as the “Killer App”. Search now appears to be exceeding Mail for the position of the “Kille App”.

Does Search development differ by market? Europeans are more likely to use search then Americans with only 86% usage, compared to over 90% as the average for Europe. Europeans are more active users of searches as well (higher search per user ratio).

Google has a might higher market dominance in Europe as well. 40% of US search queries are not monetized in the US. 76% of Google’s queries are outside the US, but only 42% of their revenue.

Key Findings:

Europeans are more likely to search
Europeans are more active searches
Pages viewed per searchquery are flat to down
Monetization gaps exist
1. Keyword Coverage (US v Europe)
2. % Searches v % of Revenue

Jonty is up next:

Search Behaviour Research Update

Doubleclick is the online advertising technology leader

Search: Bigger, Stronger, Tougher

Increase in Broadband Access
Increase in Women Online
Increase in Searching
Greater Audience Access leads to more searches which lead to more chances to reach your target audience (especially relevant for small businesses who aren’t online.

Search Channels are Widening:

Searchers are…

More Sophisticated
• 41% of users who continue their search when they can’t find satisfactory results on the first page do one of two things - change search terms or change search engines (compared to 28% 4 years ago)

More Determined
Entering Lengthier Queries
Search Engine Loyal
Brand Led

Therefore Marketers need to target both simple keywords and lengthier keyword rich phrases, rank high for your desired search terms to ensure you’re not missing out on highly qualified traffic.

UK Search Engine Use:

Multiple Use

Limited Knowledg of Search Terms/Keywords

Ok - he’s going to fast, I’m not going to continue this! It was an interesting session.

My key take-away is that search differs Country by Country and you have to understand the market in order to market and that’s why it’s called Marketing!

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