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October 23, 2009

46% of Local Searchers Visit Businesses In-Store

46% of local searchers make in-store visits, according to data released to eMarketer by TMP Directional Marketing and comScore. The number is up 12% over last year.

Meanwhile, for "general searches," 34% visited stores, but this was only up 1% over last year. Internet yellow pages searchers also came in at 34%, up from 29% last year. The overall average of searchers ending up in-store was 37%.

What local searchers are looking for are businesses that provide the products and services they're looking for. After they've found that, they look for address and location information and then a phone number.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

July 13, 2009

Eye Tracking Study Shows Sponsored Ads Attract Social Media Searchers

A new eye tracking study from Oneupweb shows that search is a core element of social media sites. They did studies on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, arguably three of the most popular social networking sites right now.

The study is especially relevant when you consider that search queries on Facebook grew 5% in May of 2009.

Search marketers will want to take note: Despite the prevailing idea that social media ads are worthless, the Oneupweb study found that 65% of participants engaged with sponsored ads within the first 10 seconds of their search.

Participants in the study were asked to navigate the social networks as they normally would. Check out where the red spots are, indicating heavy attention areas. The search box on all three sites is red. (Note that the images for Facebook and Twitter show live feed pages, which users see once they've already signed in.)

Facebook - search box is in the top right corner

Twitter - search box is on the right sidebar, a quarter of the way down.

YouTube - search box is at the top, just left of center

The participants were then asked to conduct some search tasks. Twitter was not included since the objective was to compare organic to sponsored ads and Twitter does not have sponsored ads (hello, monetization opportunity!).

Here's what happened when they arrived on search results for Pepsi on Facebook. Notice that the first result and the sponsored ad gets attention while the other results are left in the dust.

Here's a search for Pepsi on YouTube. Notice how the top 6 organic results get attention while the first sponsored ad gets attention, with the second sponsored ad sneaking in there as well.

Oneupweb also determined areas of interest (AOI) within the eye tracking data.

Notice how the sponsored ad gets the primary AOI in the search for Pepsi on both Facebook and YouTube.

What do you think of this eye tracking study? Let us know your thoughts by leaving a comment.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

February 24, 2009

U.S. Online Search Behavior Mimicks Economy

comScore has released data revealing search behavior that reflects sentiment about the economy in the United States. Searches for terms like coupons, unemployment and bankruptcy are experiencing triple digit growth.

The younger you are and the less you make, the more likely you are to conduct such searches:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

December 30, 2008

Pizza Yellow Pages Searches Expected to Soar in January

Well here's an interesting nuanced piece of information. Searches for pizza on yellow pages tend to peak in January, according to the Yellow Pages Association. It starts with the very first day of the month, when football games fuel the need for a greasy pie. Football continues the calls to local pizzerias with the NFL playoff series (Go Panthers!).

This year, politics could play a roll in puffing up pizza pertinent searches with the inauguration of Barack Obama occurring on January 20th. Of course, if you didn't vote for the man, you can always buy a pie on that day in celebration of yours truly, who will turn 31 on that very day (and whose birthdays are always overshadowed every four years by the unfortunately timed presidential event.)

Other interesting tidbits about pizza searchers:

52% are looking for a local restaurant
The most likely pizza searcher is a single male, aged 18-24, with a college degree and renting in the Northeast.
Maine is the most pizzeria-saturated state with four pizzerias for every 10,000 people.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 18, 2008

81% of Online Holiday Shoppers Read Product Reviews

It's no secret that reviews and ratings can affect a customer's purchasing decision, and today, Nielsen Online has released data showing just how powerful those reviews can be.

81% of online holiday shoppers read a product review at some point during the shopping process.
71% said that customer reviews made them feel better about their purchase
63% agree that having more than one review on a product is important
14% looked for reviews from an established source
Only 3% sought out reviews from people they knew personally.

Marketing of any kind starts with the product. If you have a solid product, it will be so much easier to advertise it. Plus, you're more likely to have a positive experience with marketing that is out of your control, like reviews, ratings, and word-of-mouth. All of these things can show up in search results, especially the more clicked upon organic search results.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

September 5, 2008

xRank and the Yahoo Buzz Index

Recently, SEW Expert Erik Qualman examined Google Insights for search trends related to newly announced Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Like Barack Obama, being unknown sends people a-searching on the internet.

Google Trends and Insights gets a lot of attention when it comes to measuring searches, and so does measurement firm comScore.

But the number 2 and 3 search engines also provide insight into hot searches. So, let's take a look at Microsoft's xRank and Yahoo's Buzz Index to see what's hot in their user searches this week too.

Microsoft's xRank sorts hot searches by categories. The current categories are Celebrities, Musicians, Politicians, Blogger and Olympics.

Here's a screenshot of the Politicians page for this week:

The Yahoo Buzz Index has categories, but not one for politics. Here's a general look at the top searches:

What do you think of xRank and Buzz Index? Let us know in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 24, 2008

Search Engines are Preferred Method for Researching Products and Services

Search engines are the preferred method of researching a product they're considering purchasing, according to data released by Opinion Research Corporation. 63% of those surveyed say they consult online news, blogs, and consumer feedback before making a purchase. And if you've been tempted to abandon organic based on the "SEO is dead" debate, you may want to think again:

70% go online to find information on brands, especially for travel, leisure, and recreation
83% say online reviews had at least some level of influence in their buying decision

“Businesses today exist in an era in which it's nearly impossible to escape the likelihood of being evaluated...there's nowhere to hide,” said Linda Shea, SVP and Global Managing Director of Customer Strategies for Opinion Research Corporation. “Companies must be extremely mindful of the power of proliferating online forums and their ability to shape consumer's perceptions about brands. Even a single negative review, when posted in a very public forum, can have a significant impact on a prospective buyer's decision to purchase.”

So when does the internet first enter the decision-making process?

38% use the internet from the start
27% go online when trying to decide between 2-3 options
21% are at the narrowing-down phase

And here's what's being researched, along with the percentage of those surveyed who go online to research the various categories:

Travel/Recreation/Leisure 82%
Electronic goods 80%
Household products/services 66%
Clothing 55%
Automotive 55%
Personal care 40%
Food 24%

What do you think of these numbers? Does it affect your view of how important SEO is? Give your thoughts in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

April 24, 2008

Study: Search Plays Key Role in Brand Loyalty, Customer Care Research

A new study about social media customer care had some interesting finds about how search factors into brand loyalty. While 59.1% of study participants use social media to vent about customer experience, 90% said search was valuable in finding information about customer care.

This data is among the initial findings of a new study conducted by the Society for New Communications Research entitled, “Exploring the Link Between Customer Care and Brand Reputation in the Age of Social Media.”

“This study indicates that there is a growing group of highly desirable consumers using social media to research companies: 25- to 55-years old, college-educated, earning $100,000+ - a very powerful group in terms of buying behavior,” said Dr. Ganim Nora Barnes, senior fellow, Society for New Communications Research. “These most savvy and sought after consumers will not support companies with poor customer care reputations, and they will talk about all of this openly with others via multiple online vehicles. This research should serve as a wake-up call to companies: listen, respond, and improve.”

Customer care was a key determinant in brand loyalty.

• 72.2% of respondents research companies' customer care online prior to purchasing products and services at least sometimes • 84% of respondents consider the quality of customer care at least sometimes in their decision to do business with a company • 74% choose companies/brands based on others' customer care experiences shared online • 84% of respondents consider the quality of customer care in their decision to do business with a company at least sometimes • 81% believe that blogs, online rating systems and discussion forums can give consumers a greater voice regarding customer care, but less than 33% believe that businesses take customers' opinions seriously

“With consumers increasingly using social media to share feedback on their care experiences, it has become increasingly difficult for businesses to ignore or hide from bad experiences,” said Lynda Kate Smith, vice president, Care Business, Nuance Enterprise Division. “As this research highlights, the consumer's voice is louder and travels further than ever before. One poor customer interaction can have a very significant impact on a public impression of a brand.”

If you want examples of how to do it right, look to Dell and Amazon. They were cited more frequently than any other company in using social media to respond to customer care issues. Breaking it down by industry, technology, retail, and travel companies were reported as doing it well, but utilities, health care, and insurance have some catching up to do in the brand loyalty department.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:27 AM | Permalink

March 28, 2008

Wordtracker Enhance Their Free Trial Offer

For the first time Wordtracker are offering a 1-week trial of their entire service and have released an accompanying 7 day video tutorial on how to get the best out of your Wordtracker account.

Entitled 'Profit from Keywords', the videos are designed to help new webmasters get the most out of keyword research. The short 5 minute videos are accessible to complete novices to search engine optimisation but detailed enough to provide a useful resource for in-house experts & agencies to educate their brand owners & clients.

At the recent SES in London, Wordtracker CMO Ken McGaffin raved about the results of "keyword creativity" seminars he has been leading with household brands that were revealing unique market insights into both offline and online customer acquisition and retention strategies. By including other non-SEO staff and stakeholders in the keyword research process, he found that no two seminars produced the same results and these companies were broadening their online vision overnight.

"Wordtracker has always considered educating our clients a prime remit which is why we launched the Wordtracker Academy last year," said McGaffin. "Clients or potential clients need to know the various ways that keyword research can enhance their business online. At the start this can be especially daunting for SMEs, so the videos provide an easy step by step process so that businesses can get up to speed quickly."

Every SEM expert understands the value of educating the market, but it's no secret that as an industry we've never done it very well. Ken hopes that these videos will help small and medium sized businesses nip the cost of mistakes early in the SEM campaign implementation stages. After all, who wants to rank for terms that no one searches for?

Posted by Jonathan Allen at 7:33 AM | Permalink

November 14, 2007

SEW Experts: Understanding the Global Search Marketplace - Part 1

The search world is expanding. Global players like Google, Yahoo, Baidu and Microsoft are competing to be the single resource for accessing information. In today's Searching for Meaning column, "Understanding the Global Search Marketplace - Part 1," Kevin Ryan begins an exploration of global search marketing, with some exclusive comScore data.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

April 29, 2007

Yes, Virginia, there is a natural and paid search synergy

“Does running a natural search campaign and a paid search campaign together create more value than running them in a non-integrated manner?” In other words, does one plus one equal three?

Back in August 2003, I spoke at Search Engine Strategies San Jose on a panel about “Balancing Organic and Paid Listings.” I presented a case study from the University of the Pacific, which indicated that getting top ranking in both organic and paid listings had tripled our click-through-rates (CTRs). I surmised that finding both an organic and a paid listing from the same site was like getting a second opinion.

This case study quickly became an urban legend and I was frequently asked for a copy of my marketing research. When I explained that the “3X effect” I had seen was based on anecdotal evidence, people would invariably say, “Please let me know if anybody ever does such a study.”

Well, now I can.

iCrossing recently published a Search Synergy Report, which found a “symbiosis” between natural and paid search. The report “conclusively demonstrates that running an integrated natural and paid search campaign leads to improved online performance over running either a natural search or paid search campaign alone.”

iCrossing used a random sample of approximately 200 keywords, including branded and non-branded terms spanning both natural and paid search. According to the digital marketing agency, “These 200 keywords are representative of 2,000 unique keywords, engines and medium (natural, paid, or both) data point combinations used in paid search as well as ranked in the first three pages of natural search results on the major U.S. engines (Google, Yahoo!, Ask, MSN, and AOL).”

So, what did they find?

iCrossing found “online performance is dramatically improved if keywords purchased for a paid search campaign are also ranked in natural search.” For example, when the digital marketing agency incorporated natural search into an existing paid search campaign and compared its performance to the performance of the sole paid search campaign: -- Clicks in creased 91.80% -- Actions increased by 45.00% -- Orders increased by 44.92% -- Page views increased 43.63% -- Visitors increased 40.69% -- Time on site increased by 38.91%

Go to http://www.icrossing.com/research/ to download a PDF version of the full report.

Okay, so the “search synergy effect” isn't quite as dramatic as the “3X effect” I reported seeing four years ago. Nevertheless, these results strongly support the theory that a positive synergy exists between natural and paid search.

Yes, Virginia, there is a sanity clause.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 6:50 PM | Permalink

February 26, 2007

Avinash Kaushik Interview

I recently had the opportunity to conduct a phone interview of Avinash Kaushik. Avinash provides his usual clear focus on using web analytics as a tool to grow your business.

From an SEO perspective, getting clear data about what's happening on your site can be a very powerful way to focus your efforts. For example, I worked on one site that knew that they were getting half of their business from one set of pages, and drew the conclusion that they should continue to focus on the search terms that were driving the most traffic to those pages.

Using Web Analytics, I was able to show them that the most common search terms for those pages were not the terms that were driving the business. The had, in fact, been trying to improve their results on search terms that were not growing their business.

Avinash is extremely knowledgeable about using web analytics as a tool, and offers a bunch of great tips to use those tools more effectily. He also has a great blog on the topic of analytics.

Posted by at 3:00 PM | Permalink

January 18, 2007

Two- and Three-Word Queries Rule

According to data collected from users of European Web analytics provider OneStat, most people use 2- or 3-word queries in search engines. The RankStat research is based on a sample of 2 million visitors, made up of 20,000 visitors in 100 countries each day.

Here's the full breakdown:

Two-word phrases -- 28.38 percent
Three-word phrases -- 27.15 percent
Four-word phrases -- 16.42 percent
One-word phrase -- 13.48 percent
Five-word phrases -- 8.03 percent
Six-word phrases -- 3.67 percent
Seven-word phrases -- 1.63 percent
Eight-word phrases -- 0.73 percent
Nine-word phrases -- 0.34 percent
Ten-word phrases -- 0.16 percent

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 10:54 AM | Permalink

December 14, 2006

Internet users searching for a home has doubled

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the number of Americans who have looked online for information about a place to live has doubled since 2000. Now, nearly two in five adult internet users in the U.S. (39%) have done this, up from 34% in 2004 and 27% in 2000.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 5:43 PM | Permalink

December 10, 2006

November Search Trend Data Released by Compete.com

Compete.com, a new search popularity tool bar and measurement service, similar to Alexa, released their data for November 2006, indicating a bounce back in traffic for Google after a small slide, and a decrease for Yahoo, who had experienced a bit of growth during October.

Interesting to note is Ask.com's growth over last year's traffic numbers, perhaps as a result of offline advertising to support the rebranding efforts.

Other key data released by Compete.com for November included top search term traffic for proper names, which contained the usual suspects of celebrity names & gossip fodder. Read more about how Compete gathers search popularity data in the corresponding blog post.

Greg Sterling first covered the launch of Compete.com, and other search gurus such as John Battelle are looking for the service to provide better data than Alexa.

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 2:36 PM | Permalink

November 21, 2006

Web Increasingly Used For Local Service Business Searches

Local online marketing firm WebVisible conducted an online survey this past August regarding Internet usage to find a local service business. The survey used Nielsen//NetRatings' online panel and asked about behavior within the past 90 days. Among more than 2,800 consumer responses, 70% had used the Internet to search for a local service business and 46% did so in the past three months. (Roughly 78% of the US adult population is online.) Almost 90% found search to be “somewhat effective” or “very effective” in finding local services in their area. And 68% said they would most likely use the phone number on the website to contact a vendor.

This means that people are using the Internet to find local service businesses in significant numbers and are pretty happy with the experience. Also interesting is the traditional method used to contact these local businesses – the telephone (PPCall opportunity).

There's more interesting data in the survey and I'll be doing a longer write-up after the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday.

Posted by Greg Sterling at 12:29 PM | Permalink

October 25, 2006

Search Influenced $15.2 Billion In Consumer Electronics Spending Through First Half

As the latest in an ongoing series of studies that capture the evolving and complex nature of consumer behavior today, Yahoo yesterday released findings from a joint study conducted with the Consumer Electronics Association. The study was fielded in June of this year and surveyed more than 2,000 U.S. adults who were pre-qualified as intending to make consumer electronics (CE) purchases.

The study looked at five CE categories: cell phones, computers, digital cameras, MP3 players and televisions. Below are the top-level findings:

The amount of online research was tied directly to the price of the product. Because higher priced products are more "considered" purchases, people spent more time doing online research. The range of time was nine hours for cell phones at the low end and 15 hours for TVs at the high end. The average duration of online research prior to purchase was 12 hours.
Of all purchasers of CE products in the study, online buyers were a significant minority (29%), while most purchases happened in local stores (71%). Of those buying offline, almost three quarters conducted online research prior to purchase.
Search engines in particular were used by 45% of the survey population that ultimately purchased in a local retail store.
On average CE consumers in the study used visited six manufacturer and/or retail sites before purchase. In navigating to those sites 55% used a search engine to go to the site, while 46% directly entered a URL. Approximately 10% followed a link from another site.
In terms of the range of sources used by purchasers (both online and off), the top four in order were as follows: 1) Internet 2) print 3) word of mouth 4) retail/other.
In terms of recall, CE consumers remembered seeing ads in various media in the following order: 1) print ads in magazines or newspapers 2) TV ads 3) Internet display ads 4) email 5) radio and 6) billboards. For Internet display advertising 40% indicated they recalled seeing an ad for the product.
One of the conclusions of the study was that of the $32.5 billion spent on the five consumer electronics categories in the first six months of the year, online research influenced $25.1 billion of that spending. Among the online sources, the study also concluded that search had a direct or indirect influence on $15.2 billion of CE buying.

Finally, the study examined the differences between “searchers” and “non-searchers,” "based on self-reported search engine usage during their research and purchase process." This is what the research determined:

"Searchers, defined as those who use search to research CE goods, represent 47 percent of the offline and online purchasers surveyed. They are more educated about what they buy, increasingly likely to advocate brands by word-of-mouth and are often considered a resource of information by friends and family. They consider more brands and are 114 percent more likely to consider Internet display advertising in their research process."

Posted by Greg Sterling at 3:52 PM | Permalink

September 26, 2006

The Internet, 'Family 2.0' And The 43-Hour Day

Yahoo and OMD issued the findings from the latest round of their ongoing global research project in 16 countries that involves online surveys and in-person interviews. What they found is that through technology and multitasking families are cramming the equivalent of 43 hours of activity into a 24 hour day. They also found that the Internet (and mobile phones) are a significant part of the fabric of daily family life.

There's a lot of interesting material in the findings. The top level data can be found in this release.

The following data are some of the more interesting findings published (some of this is verbatim from the release). Families spend more time online than watching TV:

Using the Internet 3.6 hours
Watching TV 2.5 hours
Using instant messenger 1 hour
Emailing 1.2 hours
Listening to radio 1.3 hours

Other results:

More than half (55 percent) of survey respondents age 18-34 agreed that without technology they "wouldn't be able to stay in touch with friends and family." More than a third in the 18-34 age group said their social lives would suffer without technology (34 percent) and that technology enabled them to overcome shyness (36 percent).

Two thirds (66 percent) of U.S. families surveyed use the Internet to research products, and 64 percent use a search engine every day. Families also use the Internet to share photos (62 percent), make travel reservations (60 percent) and research health (61 percent).

Internet now a primary resource for various categories of information, including some in local:

Families have adapted to new and changing media and technology, and now rely on the Internet as their top source of information on travel, jobs, finance and automobiles. Approximately half of respondents said they rely primarily on television for news (50 percent) and comedy (43 percent). Magazines are a significant source for celebrity gossip and other niche content. Newspapers are viewed as a strong secondary source, after the Internet, for information with a local flavor such as jobs, sports, concerts and events. And regarding advertising and media consumption...

Receptivity to advertising falls as ad channels become more personal. In the U.S., respondents reported that they were most open to ads in magazines and newspapers (72 percent), radio (60 percent) or TV (59 percent), and less receptive to ads on mobile phones or MP3 players.

Curiously there was nothing in the release about ads online or in search.

Postscript: Since viewing the report itself, I have a couple of things to add of interest:

Across the 11 categories of content that Yahoo-OMD explored (News, Travel, Jobs, Music, Movies, Finance, etc.) the Internet was the preferred source in all but two categories (News, Comedy/Humor), where TV was preferred with the Internet second.

Survey respondents in the U.S. were more open to ads ("It's okay to find advertising in each place") in traditional media than online or in mobile. The mobile finding is broadly consistent with other research in the market, but other studies have indicated people are open to paid-search ads and other forms of online advertising if it is perceived to be "relevant."

Posted by Greg Sterling at 11:44 AM | Permalink

September 20, 2006

The Unchanging Search Interface

Why Search Sucks & You Won't Fix It The Way You Think from me on my personal blog Daggle covers a session I did at Euro Foo Camp this week. It looks at how the search interface of major search engines has largely stayed unchanged over time. We're still using what I call the "DOS of Search." Interestingly, the Google Base change that just happened is a unique event -- the first major search engine to have an important property without that all-important search box on the home page. For me, it's just another sign of how Google Base is not intended to be a consumer-facing product, as I've written before.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:22 AM | Permalink

September 19, 2006

Video Search Usage for August 2006

Hitwise just released August 2006 market share data for the most popular online video search sites. Not surprisingly, YouTube leads with a 45.46% share of visits. MySpace Videos follows with about half the search traffic at 22.99%, and Google Video is the next closest with 10.25% of market share. Yahoo! Video and MSN Video round out the Top 5, with 6.06% and 5.92%, respectively.

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 2:20 PM | Permalink

September 14, 2006

Business Searching Beats Sex Queries & Who's Handing Out The Query Data?

There's a new paper out saying that business topics have ousted sex topics as top searches. Forget the findings, however. In the wake of the AOL search data uproar, I wanted to know where the 20 to 30 million search sessions studied came from.

The paper, Sexual and pornographic Web searching: Trends analysis, is at First Monday. A press release from Queensland University Of Technology about the paper is here. It notes that one of the paper's author Professor Amanda Spink has used:

20 to 30 million search sessions from popular search engines including Alta Vista, AlltheWeb.com, Ask.com, Excite and Dogpile.

Wow -- major players like AltaVista-owner Yahoo and Ask.com handing over data? And this after Yahoo just said it doesn't release query data to researchers? As it turns out, Yahoo and Ask are in the all clear.

The most recent data comes from Infospace-owned Dogpile, from 2005. Infospace has provided search data for years to Wordtracker, so it's not surprising that it has given it to researchers as well.

The key difference is the research data makes mention of having session information, rather than just query terms. To know a search session, you'll need to be able to know that some particular IP address or cookied person was involved. And if you have that data, then potentially you can identify someone, as the AOL case showed.

Yahoo now owns AltaVista and AllTheWeb, but the data from those services was released in 2002. That's before Yahoo gained ownership of them through the purchase of Overture in 2003.

As for Ask.com, the paper doesn't actually detail any information from that. Excite is listed, and Excite is part of Ask's IAC Search & Media Network. However, the last Excite data in 2001 came from before Ask's involvement with Excite.

Overall, none of the major search engines have handed out data here. Looking forward, the AOL fiasco will make it even less likely anyone's going to provide further information. As I've written, that is a real loss. The types of studies that Spink and her colleagues do are important, looking at how we interact and use important search tools. Figuring out a way to help that research -- yet still protect privacy -- is something I hope can happen.

As for the paper itself, it takes you back in summary fashion through nine studies over the past decade of how popular searches for porn are. Frankly, the topic is pretty boring at this point. The press release notes that:

In their mid-90s heyday, sex-related topics were the most commonly searched category, accounting for 17 per cent of web searches but that figure has now fallen to less than 4 per cent of web inquiries, information scientist Professor Amanda Spink said.

Now fallen? Hey, look at the studies. They fell back in 2002, but we keep getting releases playing up the porn is dead angle. I suppose it's nice to keep checking on this, but perhaps the fact that commerce-related queries are at an all time high (30 percent) is more important? Does it have to be contrasted against the non-changing sex stats?

And is sexual and porn searching really in declined? When I last looked in 2005, the words sex and porn were top 1 and 2 queries on Dogpile. Maybe the overall volume of porn-related queries is dropping, but it still seems to be a popular subject. Heck, here's a Google Trends chart for porn showing a rise since 2004.

Moreover, look at the paper itself. It ranks "sex" as tenth of the most popular terms on Dogpile. That's popular. It's even more popular when you eliminate these "popular" stop words above it: of, the, in, and, for, a, to. Do that, and this is how the top list looks:

free
girls
sex

Frankly, anyone doubt that sex is still a popular query? The lists might be even more dramatic if they reflected actual queries as entered, rather than individual words. In other words, no one's search for "of" in mass quantities. They are using that word alongside other ones -- and breaking apart the original queries causes skewing.

I've also got some issues about the fact that different search engines are used to compare data over time. For all we know, Excite users were more into porn than those of other search engines. Since Excite's data was used for the first three years, that could cause a skew. Perhaps not, but it's something to note.

Postscript: I asked Amanda Spink if she had any comments to add, and she sent across this: What we have found in the data is that although sexual terms such as "sex" maybe high frequency terms, overall sexual searching continues to decline as a proportion of Web searches. The language used in sexual searching is realtively constrained and limited in variety, hence the high frequency terms. We hope that further data can be made available to the academic community to allow us to continue these studies that are of interest to the Web companies, academics and the general public.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:46 AM | Permalink

September 13, 2006

Hitwise Data Center Offers Search Terms & Top Search Engines For Various Countries

New from Hitwise is the Hitwise Data Center, sharing details on web surfing behavior. There are different data centers for various countries, and for search marketers, two key reports tell you top terms and top search engines.

Hitwise Data Center US, for example, shows you the top search engines by volume of searches here and top search terms here. From the Data Center home page, you can also use the drop-down box to get top terms by particular categories, such as these for dating.

Beyond the US, there's also:

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:49 PM | Permalink

August 23, 2006

Researchers Debate Whether To Study The AOL Data

When the AOL privacy case broke earlier this month, I wrote about how the intention of releasing the data was honorable despite the ineptness of how it was done. Those trying to research search behavior have been starved for decent data. Researchers Yearn to Use AOL Logs, But They Hesitate from the New York Times covers this in more detail, about how the existing data sets out there are nearly 10 years old.

Along the way, we discover researchers are debating if they should use the data. I'd say you might as well. It's not like you'll be getting more any time soon. As long as the researchers aren't themselves republishing in a way to violate someone's privacy, it's hard to see the harm. At this point, the data has been spread so far and wide, accessible in many ways, that it's difficult to see what the researchers think they'd be protecting by studying it.

The story also touches on data releases from other search engines (Yahoo and Microsoft say they've done some controlled, limited releases; Google says they hand nothing out). It also highlights how the researcher who put the data out -- again with the best of intentions -- simply didn't realize that people would be able to be tracked down through their search profiles.

Most interesting is the end of the story, looking at if there's a way to scrub the search stream so that data could be released and be untraceable. I've said I'd love to see that type of solution happen. But it would have to be foolproof, and I'm not sure how that can happen unless you have human review of profiles that might go out.

Meanwhile, the San Jose Mercury News in What do Google, Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft's MSN know about you? effectively does over the same survey of how long data is kept that News.com did last February, in the wake of the US Department Of Justice search privacy debate. I mentioned the story before, but let me highlight a key part of it:

While AOL is unique among the Big Four in that its users are easily identified by an AOL user name after they have logged in, people who frequent Google, Yahoo and MSN are also monitored by a combination of digital tracking systems.

Nope, AOL is not that unique. If you've logged into Google, Yahoo or MSN to use any of their services, chances are when you search, they'll also have you keyed to a particular profile that's more unique that just looking at your IP address or a cookie. The story does explain this more, and my previous post Which Search Engines Log IP Addresses & Cookies -- And Why Care? goes into the explanation in more depth. In looking at that previous post, I also saw this:

[News.com]: Given a list of search terms, can you produce a list of people who searched for that term, identified by IP address and/or cookie value?

[AOL]: No. Our systems are not configured to track individuals or groups of users who may have searched for a specific term or terms, and we would not comply with such a request.

Despite the response, I'm 99 percent certain AOL does indeed log IP addresses and cookies along with search data. Searching on AOL creates a page request with the search terms embedded in the page's URL. That request will be logged. If it's logged, it can be analyzed. In fact, AOL later says they can give you a list of searches that were done by a particular IP address or cookied browser. If you have that information, you have the opposite.

Of course, we now know that it was indeed the case that you could take AOL's data, give it a search term and get a list of individuals who searched for it. Yes, the individuals were given anonymous numbers, so the AOL answer is technically correct. But the overall profile of what someone was searching for in some cases turned out to be personally revealing.

I'm planning a longer recap on some of the latest out of the AOL case, but in the meantime, I still keep coming back to this conclusion from an earlier post:

I think consumers will need more faith and control over how long search data is kept for them, plus the ability to opt-out or delete histories with a push of a button, perhaps the type of privacy/data control panel John Battelle has wished for. And as I've written, that has to include ISPs, many of which merrily sell search data that they monitor to third party companies.

I'm working on a longer look back at the fallout from the AOL release and ways forward. But a quick shout-out to Daniel Brandt of Google Watch is in order. Seth Finkelstein just gave him one, and I'll add to it. I've felt Brandt's often twisted things or focused on stuff that didn't matter much (Google's 30 year cookie that most people won't really have last for more than a year or two, if that). But his long-standing call for regular data destruction -- something other privacy advocates have also pushed for -- seems the most secure solution going forward.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:19 PM | Permalink

August 2, 2006

Search Marketers Often Don't Track All Referring Conversions

ClickZ reports on a 360i and SearchIgnite study that shows that search marketers do not look at all "assists," instead they primarily look at the last referring click that lead to the conversion. Here are some highlights of the report:

+ 37.3% of conversions come from consumers clicking on more than one of a marketer's natural or paid listings; it's in these multiple-click scenarios where the clicks' credit can often be misapplied + Over two-thirds (66%) of clicks are from consumers clicking a marketer's listing multiple times + 12.6% of conversions credited to natural search results were preceded by clicks on a marketer's paid listings, nearly twice as many as occur in the converse scenario

The full report can be downloaded by registration here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:03 AM | Permalink

July 27, 2006

What Drives Searchers to Buy Cars?

The automotive industry is the largest player in the search world, in both natural search engine optimization and in the paid search arena. Until recently, auto manufacturers weren't a major presence in search results, with most search marketing campaigns conducted by independent aggregators who focused on providing quotes, helping consumers locate dealers and so on. Recently, however, the major manufacturers have begun to flex their search muscles, much to the consternation of aggregators, who are feeling crowded. A new study from Yahoo and comScore looked at searcher behavior in the automotive sector, analyzing activity, user preferences, and how purchases were ultimately made. The results are fascinating, and offer lessons for search marketers operating in any field. More on the study in today's SearchDay article, New Research Shows How Search Drives Auto Buyers.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 8:39 AM | Permalink

July 26, 2006

Study Reveals Changing Web

A report of a new study over on WebSiteOptimization.com has some interesting research showing how users ineract with web sites, revealing an "F-shaped" eyetracking patterns similar to the results Enquiro found looking at earch results. From the study:

A new browser study revealed a shift in how we interact with the Web. University of Hamburg researchers found the Web moving from static hypertext information to dynamic interactive services. Clickstream heatmaps and web page statistics show rapid interaction over smaller areas of the screen. The authors recommend that web developers create concise, flexible, and fast loading web pages to keep pace with the speed of web navigation.

Read on: Clickstream Study Reveals Dynamic Web

Posted by Chris Sherman at 6:02 PM | Permalink

July 24, 2006

Only 11 Percent Of Searchers Use One Word Queries

OneStat.com published a report detailing that only 11.4 percent of searchers use one-word queries, two-word queries 28.9% leads the bunch, followed by three-word queries at 27.85%, four-word queries with 17.1%, five-word with 8.25% and six-word queries with 3.7%. The report also breaks down number of queries used by country; Canadians are more likely to search with four-word queries, Germans use two-word queries 40% of the time and then 28% use one-word queries. OneStat's research was "based on a sample of 2 million visitors divided into 20,000 visitors of 100 countries each day." More details at OneStat.com.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:58 AM | Permalink

June 23, 2006

Yahoo Says Searchers are Better Patients

New research from Yahoo tells us that the majority of people who searched for health information subsequently visited their doctor (61%) and that 71% of these folks went equipped with pointed, action oriented questions. Searchers also use twice as many resources to learn about health issues than the average consumer.

Other key findings include:

20% of consumers were driven to search online because they saw an advertisement and wanted more information.
Searchers are 130% more likely to have seen an online display ad and view it as informational.
70% of searchers will question their doctor if they are prescribed a brand different from what they searched for online.

The research was commissioned by Yahoo! in conjunction with Hall & Partners Healthcare to gain a deeper understanding of health searcher?s attitudes and behaviors, and how this impacts doctor visits and prescriptions. The study surveyed over 5,600 online health seekers with extra focus on those searching for Allergy, Depression and High Cholesterol information. Although demographics differed by condition, attitudes and behavior on search were essentially the same.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 3:12 PM | Permalink

June 16, 2006

Most Searched For Famous Dads

Father's Day is coming up this Sunday and AOL has compiled a list of the most searched for famous dads. Here is a list on the most popular dads on AOL Search based on searches from May 21 through June 10:

1 Brad Pitt 2 Chris Daughtry 3 Howard Stern 4 Allen Iverson 5 Eminem 6 50 Cent 7 Daddy Yankee 8 Paul McCartney 9 Elvis Presley 10 George Bush

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:59 AM | Permalink

June 14, 2006

Searcher Behavior Update

Search marketing has evolved from relatively simple optimization of web pages into a more sophisticated process involving a number of variables. Apart from tactical maneuvers with SEO or PPC campaigns, savvy search marketers are increasingly trying to understand searcher behavior, and attempting to proactively anticipate user needs. More and more research is providing hard data to support these efforts, writes Grant Crowell in today's SearchDay article, Understanding Searcher Behavior.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:11 AM | Permalink

June 9, 2006

Google Video Movers & Shakers (AKA Zeitgeist)

David Krane posted that Google Video launched a new feature named Movers & Shakers. The Movers & Shakers feature is a page that shows you the most popular videos at Google Video. You can filter by which videos are most popular by country.

Currently the most popular video in the world at Google Video is 2001 Japanese Tetris Finals . But let's see what is the most popular video in Japan. You would think it would be the 2001 Japanese Tetris Finals but no, it is Cool TAK - I am so cool.

Postscript: Wanted to clarify this a bit more. Movers & Shakers are videos that are quickly rising in popularity. Today's Movers & Shakers could be tomorrow's Top 100. Movers & Shakers is one way to identify videos that are becoming viral. Google uses algorithms to identify videos that are suddenly becoming popular, and then rank them based on how popular they are and how suddenly they became popular.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:31 AM | Permalink

June 8, 2006

The Top 100 Companies Searched Most On Hoover's Web site

Hoover's released the Hoover's 100, the top 100 companies searched most on at the Hoover's web site. The top ten are; Wal-Mart, Apple, Proctor & Gamble, Dell, Microsoft, GE, Starbucks, Johnson & Johnson, Google and IBM, respectively. To view the full top 100, visit The Hoover's 100.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:23 AM | Permalink

US, UK Searchers & The World Cup

The World Cup opens tomorrow. For my fellow Americans, many of whom may have no idea that the US is in it, you might want to check out my personal experiences living in World Cup-mad Eng-er-land at the moment. And now the run-up to search and soccer is starting. Hitwise: World Cup and Soccer Searches over at iMedia Connection covers stats from Hitwise showing how Yahoo sent the official FIFA World Cup site the most traffic -- no surprise given Yahoo's a key sponsor. You can also see what soccer players are most popular among US searchers, with former women's team player Mia Hamm leading the pack.

I don't see any of this data over at the Hitwise analyst weblogs yet or in news releases. But watch the blogs. I guarantee Bill Tancer or one of his colleagues will jump in to do a big giant thing now, since the relatively sparse data out there now is already getting my attention.

And another bet. If you looked for the most popular searched for football payer based on UK data recently, it would be Wayne Rooney. A nation over here is relieved that his toe has healed (ok, ok, his metatarsal) and he'll be able to play.

Hey, I don't need no stinkin' Hitwise. Here's a Google trends chart. Just look at the spike. Here, compare to superstar David Beckham (my claim to fame -- his kid and my kid were both in the same group that drove cars at Legoland a few years ago). The chart also shows Theo Walcott, recently named to the team with much amazement. Theo's spike is nothing like Wayne's and David hardly get it up at all. Here's also a UK specific view.

Postscript: Heck, Hitwise was already moving in the UK. Heather Hopkins has just posted UK stats here: Wayne Rooney Injury, David Beckham Hairstyles and Peter Crouch Dance. And while Wayne Rooney did have a spike, Peter Crouch and his robot dance seems to have pushed that player past Rooney in terms of searches recently. Google Trends doesn't show that -- but Google Trends doesn't run into May, when Crouch spike happened. Also from Hitwise PR side, a list of top footballers searched for in the UK:

Most Searched-for World Cup Footballers Week Ending 3rd June 2006

Rank Name

1 Ronaldinho

2 Steven Gerrard

3 Peter Crouch

4 David Beckham

5 Wayne Rooney

6 Cristiano Ronaldo

7 Frank Lampard

8 Thierry Henry

9 Ronaldo

10 Theo Walcott

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:33 AM | Permalink

June 7, 2006

Top Four & Two Percent Are Key For On Site Search Keyword Optimization

ClickZ has the details of a Patricia Seybold Group study which says that for e-commerce sites, the top two-percent of search queries conducted within the site are the most important. The top four-percent of search queries conducted on non-ecommerce sites are the most important. If you improve the searcher experience for those top 4 or 2 percent of your internal site searches, half of all searchers will be happier.

So if you can mine the top four-percent of your internal searches and start in order to make those results better, you can greatly improve your searcher's experience. Specifically with a site you are trying to sell on, if you can improve those top queries, you will more likely convert on a sale. Happy searchers are 2.7 times more likely to convert on your site.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:34 AM | Permalink

Top 25 Search Phrases Conducted At The CIA FOIA Collection Listed

The CIA has a site that enables people to access and search CIA information such as previously released documents that were approved for release to the public. Gary Price discovers that the CIA has come up with a list of the top 25 searches at the CIA's FOIA Electronic Reading Room. Which phrases made the top 25, yea, UFO is one of them, what are the others?

soviet analysis: 1647 ufo: 1066 iran: 690 cuba: 652 south africa: 457 assassination: 400 brazil: 367 iraq: 366 area 51: 364 soviet+analysis: 358 afghanistan: 352 bay of pigs: 323 jfk: 304 israel: 295 chile: 294 kennedy: 280 vietnam: 244 nicaragua: 231 france: 226 poland: 215 pbsuccess: 212 nato: 202 soviet: 198 korea: 175 turkey: 170

The page is expected to be updated twice per month, one the first and fifteenth of each month.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:15 AM | Permalink

May 25, 2006

Travel Search Used By Few But Will Grow & Kayak Gets Top Honors In Review

A new report finds few use travel search engines but that declares the area set to grow. Meanwhile, an recent review gives Kayak top honors when pitted against some competitors.

Via Marketing Pilgrim, a new report US Travel Consumer Survey 2006 from Jupiterresearch found that "only four percent of online travelers say a travel search engine impelled them to plan or purchase their most recent trip."

David Schatsky, president of Jupiter Kagan said:

Travel meta search engines are now offering expanded products and several have relationships with major distribution partners such as Yahoo!, AOL and Amazon. With this, travel meta search engines are poised to grow.

I agree with David, that meta search engines are poised to grow, but of the deals mentioned above, I only think Farechase really benefits.

Kayak, which powers Pinpoint Travel shows up for many searches on AOL, but Travelocity still powers AOL's travel channel. SideStep signed a deal with Amazon, but Amazon's travel section is so hidden that I doubt it's driving much traffic. There's potential for both these relationships to develop into something more meaningful for all parties, but at this point, only the FareChase/Yahoo! integration has much bite.

In separate news, Review: Kayak Best Travel Search Engine from the Associated Press is a bold headline, covering Kayak getting top honors in a face-off against several meta search engines.

The writer puts the search engines through a number of hypothetical trips (unfortunately, only looking at flights, not hotels) and says:

Kayak.com most often had the best fare six times while Yahoo came up best or tied five times. Mobissimo was on top four times, and SideStep Inc. tied for first once.

The writer was also very impressed with the features/UI on Kayak.

For a different perspective, BusinessWeek Online's Sarah Lacey wrote a review of Kayak earlier this week with the title Kayak: A Step Behind SideStep. Everyone has an opinion.

Posted by Brian Smith at 1:54 PM | Permalink

May 24, 2006

Leveraging Brand and Non-Brand Search Terms

New research from search marketing firms 360i and Search Ignite looks at the effectiveness of brand vs. non-brand search terms. The findings suggest that brand terms are the most effective—but that a careful combination of brand and non-brand terms can be nearly equally effective. More on the report and the tactical suggestions it offers for search marketers in today's SearchDay article, The Value of Branded vs. Non-Branded Search Terms.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 3:12 AM | Permalink

May 22, 2006

Searcher Behavior: An SEOs Perspective

Shari Thurow has a new ClickZ article live named Analyzing Search Behavior for SEO, which looks at searcher behavior from the SEO's perspective. She defines the different modes of search behavior that include; Berrypicking, Querying, Refining, Expanding, Browsing/surfing, Pogo-sticking, Foraging, Scanning (eye-tracking) and Reading. Shari goes deep into a paper written by Marcia J. Bates in 1989 named Berrypicking, for the inspiration of Analyzing Search Behavior for SEO.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:24 AM | Permalink

May 17, 2006

YSM and Geotargeting

Danny already posted in pretty extensive detail -- my laptop battery died or I would've put this up sooner -- regarding Tim Cadogan's presentation at Yahoo Analyst Day. Tim was very thorough and credible in discussing the upgrades and improvements to the platform.

One area of interest to me, of course, was his discussion of local.

He said in their numerous conversations with advertisers one of the top requests was improved geotargeting. (Cadogan saw this benefiting both large and small business advertisers, and Yahoo by extension.) Yahoo Search Marketing has long had geotargeting but it has generally been perceived as less flexible and less effective than Google's program.

Cadogan said that advertisers would notice many improvements around geotargeting on the new system including enhanced targeting by DMA, city and radius around a zip code and that these would be represented visually on a map.

Yahoo's acquisition last year of Whereonearth is partly responsible for the reportedly new and improved geotargeting, which should be global in scope. He also said that the technology will help deliver better locally relevant content across the network for consumers.

When I was with The Kelsey Group I asked then comScore SVP Jim Larrison to do a "thoughtful" analysis of local search to determine how much consumer traffic and what percentage of "search" carried a local intent. comScore's methodology was fairly "conservative," measuring traffic at local domains (e.g., local.yahoo.com or superpages.com) and those queries with geo-modifiers (e.g., "new york sushi bars"). The Kelsey Group estimate, which I had helped originally formulate, was that about 20% of search had a local intent. But Larrison's analysis suggested that, if consumer behavior was examined carefully, the number was closer to 40%. Larrison?s number came out at one of the Kelsey Group conferences and now has been picked up a number of times.

Indeed, today I heard that number reflected back to Cadogan in an audience question about what percentage of search was local in nature: "Some estimates put it at about 40% of queries." Cadogan gave a quick and qualified answer that the stated number was "in the ballpark."

CFO Sue Decker who fielded questions with Cadogan after he was through with his formal presentation also stressed the importance of local and geotargeted ads to Yahoo going forward. In her final remarks later in the day she also talked about Yahoo's successes with small business advertiser acquisition.

Here's more from my rambling raw notes on this morning's presentations.

Posted by Greg Sterling at 5:54 PM | Permalink

May 16, 2006

Study: Online Borrowers Often Searched Before Applying for Loan

A new study from Compete, Inc. and Forrester Research found that consumers who applied online for home loans were more likely to have used search and product selector tools—nearly one in five used search, compared with only 7 percent of all loan prospects.

The study, "Online Mortgage Shoppers' Paths To Purchase: Navigational And Survey Data Uncovers How Prospects Use Sites," looked at the behavior of millions of users as they searched, researched, and applied for mortgage loans.

Another key finding: While many applicants used the internet for research but then went offline to apply via the phone or in person, 37% of applicants applied online or submitted a lead form via the Internet.

More information on the findings should be available from Compete's web site when they update their press release page.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 11:42 AM | Permalink

May 10, 2006

Fun With Google Trends

Danny just posted about Google Trends, a service of Google that shows you search volume trends over time for a keyword or for multiple keywords. I thought it would be fun to ask Google Trends which search engine, of the top four, is the most popular, in terms of search volume. So I queries Google Trends for Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, MSN (keep in mind ask jeeves is now ask.com). I also thought it would be fun to pin Apple vs. Windows vs. Linux. So let's see what Google Trends had to say...

Battle of the Search Engines: Search Volume: What is very interesting to note, is that Yahoo was queried more often at Google Search than Google. Which makes sense, who in their right minds would search on the keyword "Google" at Google? Um, well, I have seen people do it, trust me. So what is really interesting is that people are actually searching on "Google" at Google. While all search engines seem to have an upward slop, in search volume, Ask Jeeves seems to have a downwards slop. So let's trend Ask.com on the list as well, and you will notice that the Ask.com search volume bar hits above the Ask Jeeves search volume bar as soon as Ask Jeeves begins to slope downwards. So based on Google Trends, the most popular search engines, in order of search volume are Yahoo, Google, MSN and Ask (as of April 2006). News Volume: But when you look at Google News search volume things change slightly. Yes, someone at Google News is more likely to search on the the keyword "Google" because the search is totally different in nature. I am not looking to find Google.com at Google News, I am looking to find news items on Google at Google News. So, as you would expect "Google" is has the highest news search volume. Yahoo, MSN and then Ask follow Google. Digging Deeper: What happens when you look at it by city, region or languages, does that change the results? Well, yes! We know Australians are found of Google and Google Trends shows us that Australians are more fond of MSN than Google, but more fond of Google than Yahoo or Ask based on search volume. In India, searchers love Yahoo more than anyone else. From Chile or Turkey, well you gotta have MSN as your favorite search engine. Poor Ask never wins the game but they do pretty well in the United Kingdom. You can also play with cities and languages to see how that makes a difference...

Battle of the Operating Systems: Search Volume: For those that know me, I am an Apple fan - using one right now to write this. Unfortunately, not everyone is like me, well the majority of people are not like me. Search volume on "windows" is way more popular than Apple (and Apple also stands for a fruit!) Guess what, Linux is also more popular than Apple! News Volume: But when it comes to news search volume, Apple has its spikes. For one, Apple is always more searched on than Linux for news search. But there are times where Apple jumps ahead on news search to surpass Windows. Digging Deeper: So what does this mean? Well, obviously, people are more likely to have bugs with Windows OS and Linux OS when compared to Apple. Duh! People are searching for solutions at Google for their problems. Just kidding. The region, language and city breakdown don't really show too much more on this particular query.

You see, this tool can be used for educational purposes, commercial purposes and can also be used for fun.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 3:36 PM | Permalink

Google Trends: Peer Into Google's Database Of Searches

Now live via Google Labs is a new Google Trends service, announced today as part of Google Press Day. The service allows you to tap into Google's database of searches, to determine what's popular. For example, do a trends query on cars, and you can see the volume of queries over time, by city, regions, languages and so on.

Let's take a single search first and go through the motions. A query on ipod gives a chart going back through January 2004, which is as far back as Google Trends data goes. You can see spikes in searches, and these are often labeled with letters that lead to related news items. Google says it is using similar technology to do this as it does with company price charts in Google Finance.

Below the chart, you get some geographical and regional data. For example, you'll see most iPod searches are happening in New York, then in Irvine, then San Francisco, London and so on. That's the city data. Next is a Regional option, which gives you a breakdown by country (iPod searches are big in the UK then the US and Australia). Finally, you can narrow by language (Most searches for iPod are done in English, then Japanese).

Want to narrow in? You can do a variety of things. Using the drop down boxes, you can pick a particular month, such as last month. You can also pick a particular region, like last month just in the United States.

You aren't limited to single words. Enter multiple words by commas to do comparisons, such as google,yahoo,microsoft. That query shows you each term in a different color, and you can then see all the breakdowns for each word, as well. You can do up to five words in total. Want to do multiword queries? There's ways to do that -- check out the help page for more.

Sometimes when you do a search, you'll get something like this message:

Your terms - larry page - do not have enough search volume to show graphs.

What's happening here is that Google's working to help protect search privacy. There's a slight chance someone might enter something like their own name along with something embarrassing or private. Potentially, Google Trends could reveal this information.

My Private Searches Versus Personally Identifiable Searches article explains this issue more, and it's something Google used successfully to argue against handing over query data to the US Department Of Justice. Given this, it needed to put some protections into place. That mechanism is to only show data about queries that happen often.

"Something has to be in the hundreds of times per week for you to see trends," said Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products & user experience, about the service. This is also touched on in the help page on the Google Trends site.

Some things to keep in mind. For example, Mayer cited to me a yankees,red socks comparison. Searches for Yankees are well above the Red Socks, so they must be more popular! Well, it's also a case that there are more people in New York than Boston, so there are more people potentially searching for the Yankees.

(Postscript: So I'm an idiot -- it's Red Sox, of course. And yankees,red sox for 2006 shows Red Sox actually much closer to Yankees. So cop-out time, the point in general remains valid. There are things that can skew the stats in ways you might not expect. For example, if you search for a particular company and you see growth in their name, are they more popular? In 2005, you might think so for Kryptonite. But go broader, you'll see a spike in 2004 associated with the Kryptonite locks-can-be-picked-by-ballpoint-pin-fiasco. That incident might have helped fuel some of the rise in following year -- searches that aren't necessarily reflecting a popular view of the company).

Another caveat. The geographic data is based on IP targeting, which isn't perfect. In particular, people who use AOL are often seen as if they are in Virginia, regardless of their true location.

How about query spam? Google's got a system designed to help filter for this, either if intentionally done or accidentally. For example, if it sees many queries all coming from the same IP address, that might be caught. Similarly, if it sees many queries coming from different cookies, it could be caused by the same person who rejects standing cookies. Each search would generate a new cookie, so potentially the same single person might be seen as different individuals.

"We are savvy to that case and make sure we saw queries from 100 different unique cookies that aren't fresh," she said.

Also, the data isn't filtered or consolidated in the way things happen in Google Zeitgeist or other search data mining tools. In other words, car brings back different results than cars. And if you want to see the dark underbelly of search, you can see in sex,ipod that if Apple sold a sexPod, it would leave iPod in the dust. You can also search for explicit adult terms, should you have the hankering.

Finally, Google rightly warns that this is more a play thing that something you can use for definitive predictions of popularity.

For a different spin on Google Trends, check out Barry's post, Fun With Google Trends. Now that we've warned you not to take the data too seriously, time for some comparisons anyway :)

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:26 PM | Permalink

April 26, 2006

Is Google Search More Relevant Or Is There A Brand Factor?

The battle of which search engine is the most relevant has been going on for years. Yesterday at SES Toronto's Searcher Behavior Research Update panel we had two presenters talk about studies they have conducted to determine which search engine is the most relevant. Google has won the relevancy battle in those studies, but was it due to Google's brand or due to Google's search results?

An InternetNews.com article also has a nice summary of the session. But let me explain them in a nutshell for you.

Gord Hotchkiss showed part two of his study, where he conducted an eye tracking test on users on both MSN, Yahoo and Google search results page. Google's results showed that people were more likely not to look down the page at results below the 2nd or 3rd listings, but MSN and Yahoo results showed that the user was much more likely to look down the results to results as low as 6 or 7. Does that mean Google's results were more relevant, sooner? Meaning people did not have to scroll to see more results sooner? He said, maybe or maybe not. He noted that the layout of Google's results at that time had bolded the keywords queried by the searcher, on the page - which may have prompted searchers to click on those results sooner with the bolded words than without the bolded words.

Lance Jones was the next speaker he conducted a study that took all the branding off the Google results and tested searchers to see if they like the results with and without knowing the results were from Google. The users scored the results from scores from 0 to 1,000. The users scored the results that were identical on both groups, 800 for Google branded results and 737 for unbranded Google results. This shows that knowing the results are from Google, adds a bias to how relevant the results are or are not.

So is Google more relevant? Well, my RustySearch live results show Google is now the leader in relevancy. When I first published the results, Yahoo was in the lead. At some point in the last 3-months or so, Google took over the lead.

The bottom-line is that relevancy is an incredibly hard factor to measure.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 12:26 PM | Permalink

Search Stats Don't Have to be Boring

There's no shortage of data related to search marketing, with everything from market share numbers to frequency of search terms analyzed by market research groups. Some find all this data deathly boring—but it doesn't have to be. In fact, with the appropriate presentation style, search data can be downright entertaining, as it was at a recent Search Engine Strategies panel. Christine Churchill has the rundown on the panel in today's SearchDay article, Searchonomics: Search Statistics Made Fun.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:27 AM | Permalink

April 25, 2006

20% Of Google Mobile Searches Are Adult Specific

eWeek has a very interesting blog post covering how one of every five Google searches on a phone are for adult oriented keywords. That means, Google mobile searches are twice as likely to search for porn related items as compared to normal Web searches on Google. The story comes off a Google research paper you'll find here (PDF format).

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:35 AM | Permalink

Yahoo's Ad Inventory Beats Out Google

Susan Kuchinskas informed me of this post that shows recent comScore qSearch stats where Yahoo's ad inventory is higher as a percentage, when compared to Google. Yahoo shows a PPC ad for 59.7 percent of Web searches conducted. Google shows a PPC ad for 52.9 percent of Web searches. Google still has a higher click through rate with 11.8 percent but Yahoo is not far behind with 11.4 percent. Keep in mind, I know Danny hates comparing month to month, and these numbers are comparing March 2006 vs. March 2005.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:14 AM | Permalink

April 21, 2006

This Internet Thing Isn't Just a Fad

New research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project confirms that the internet has become a crucial source of information at major moments and milestones in our lives:

Our surveys show that 45% of internet users, or about 60 million Americans, say that the internet helped them make big decisions or negotiate their way through major episodes in their lives in the previous two years.

While this new research doesn't even use the phrase "search engine," the implication is pretty clear that people are searching to find this critical information. And remarkably, just 5% said the information found was misleading, which in the inimitable words of Good Morning Silicon Valley blogger John Paczkowski, "is either an encouraging sign of search effectiveness or a worrisome warning about credulity."

More on the Internets Growing Role in Lifes Major Moments is available as a summary or full pdf report.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:21 PM | Permalink

April 19, 2006

Chris Pirillo Search Podcasts From SES NY & Googlefasting

I'm belated in getting a link up to Chris Pirillo's many podcasts he did out of the Search Engine Strategies show last month. He talked with a ton of people on a huge number of topics, which you'll find listed here. I really enjoyed talking with him about his Googlefasting project, where he found he could live without Google, but he didn't want to. We discussed how people can get into a habit of using any service, and they don't necessarily want to "kick" that habit if the service works well and they trust it. That's the big challenge for any search engine to win users away from another service. As I've long said, it's not that you have to be better. You also have to hope the other search engine is doing noticeably worse or bad by its users.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:48 AM | Permalink

April 17, 2006

Branded Searches Lead To Non Company Site 15% Off The Time

ClickZ reports on a Hitwise study that shows that 15% of branded searches lead to competitor's sites, comparison shopping engines and affiliates as opposed to the official brand Web site. The study also shows that branded searches are up 17 percent over the same period last year. The study shows that for some branded keyword searches, diversion from the official company site is as high as 26 percent, as with the case with the search query "allstate insurance." You can request a copy of the report here.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, What Percentage Of Brand Name Traffic Should Brand Names Get?

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:33 AM | Permalink

April 11, 2006

Research: Top Rankings Becoming More Important

Two new studies reinforce what all search marketers instinctively know: You need to have top rankings to capture the attention and clicks of searchers. But that's not all: Searchers are becoming more sophisticated, increasingly using longer queries, and tweaking failed queries with additional search terms. More findings from the two studies in today's SearchDay article, Searcher Behavior Research Update.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 8:10 AM | Permalink

April 3, 2006

Just How Accurate Is The Google Zeitgeist?

Accuracy of Google Zeitgeist over at our Search Engine Watch Forums is a nice "what gives" about some oddities in the international version of the Google Zeitgeist, where it gives you a rundown on search behavior in various countries. For instance, why is viagra so hot in Singapore -- and why do links from the Zeitgeist actually bring up Google South Africa?

It got me to give the lists for each country a second look, and I was scratching my head as well. For example, "national lottery" is the top popular query for the United Kingdom in Feburary 2006? Really? Somehow, I doubt it.

Let's spin back to the Google Zeitgeist in general. I don't think Google's ever released a complete "top searches" list on it. Instead, they focus "rising" terms or popular terms in various categories, such as this:

Zeitgeist This Week Gaining Search Queries: Week Ending March 27, 2006

1. debra lafave 2. scarlett johansson 3. danica patrick 4. chicken little 5. paul dana 6. buck owens 7. daylight savings time 8. george mason 9. shakira 10. rocio durcal 11. stay alive 12. inside man 13. super adventure club 14. sasha cohen 15. tiger woods

These aren't the most popular queries. These are queries that are said to be gaining the most growth. However, Google filters out things like navigational terms or sexual terms, so there could be some gainers we aren't seeing.

On a monthly basis, you can get what look like top terms in various categories. You can see some examples here, then the monthly archives stop, from November 2005 through January 2006. The current page here here has Feburary 2006.

Those top searches feel OK. I can see something like "iran" as the most searched for country or "xbox 360" as the most searched for video game. But now let's go to the international list.

Why does Singapore have "viagra" at the top of the list? First, maybe it isn't. "Popular" queries don't necessarily mean most popular for each country. Second, other counties might have plenty of viagra searches, as well. But Google might be filtering these out of the top query lists and failed to do that for Singapore.

Similarly, why is "national lottery" seeming to be the most popular query in the UK? Chances are, it's not. Again, popular does not equal most popular. I'm sure any country with a national lottery gets a large number of similar queries, a navigational request of people trying to see what the winning numbers are. It might be these are being filtered out of other lists but not the UK's.

Anyway, I'll drop a note to Google to see if I can get a little clarity on some of this.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:59 PM | Permalink

March 22, 2006

Google Enhances Keyword Tool; Adds Global Trend Graphs

Google AdWords announced that they have added "global trends" to the Keyword Tool. Global trends shows the search volume of a particular keyword phrase, charted over a 12 month historical period. To access this data, you can go here and then enter your keyword phrases. Then click the "Get More Keywords", after the page loads, on the right side, select from the "Show columns" drop down menu, the "Global search volume trends" option. You will then see this data charted for you.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:58 AM | Permalink

February 23, 2006

60% Oppose Search Engines Storing Search Behaviors

A study conducted by the University of Connecticut showed that 60% of users are opposed to search engines permanently storing their search behaviors. The study was in response to the US Government requesting search data from the search engines. The 23% of 800 Americans surveyed use a search engine more then once per day. They were split down the middle on the question of; should search engines provide search queries to the government, whereas 30% are in favor of the government monitoring search data. The study also shows that "only 13% of the public feel extremely or very confident that the search behavior collected by Internet companies will remain private." Read the full study here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:32 AM | Permalink

February 21, 2006

Google Tops Search Loyalty Study, Though Many Searchers Aren't That Loyal

A new search loyalty study by Compete shows that Google leads its competitors by far in having the most loyal searchers, those who stick with it exclusively and don't use other services. But even Google still has nearly one-third of its searchers willing to "cheat" on it and use other search engines.

The study looked at what percentage of searchers at a particular search engine only searched using that service exclusively and no others, for December 2005. The breakdown:

Google: 71.0%
Yahoo: 48.1%
MSN: 27.8%
Excite: 23.4%
AOL: 23.2%
Ask: 21.6%
AltaVista: 16.6%
Clusty: 10.3%
A9: 6.4%
Lycos: 5.8%

In the example above, Google is shown as having 71 percent of its searchers only using Google and no other service. The remaining 29 percent are people who have used Google and one or more of its competitors.

The study goes into more depth, breaking down search share by "Personalized Homepage Users" and "Competitor Breakdown." You can read the full study here (PDF file, free registration required).

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:08 PM | Permalink

Current TV Launched Google Current

Dirson reports that Current TV has recently launched Google Current. Google Current will be a broadcast of the most recent and popular Google News stories every 30 minutes. Gary blogged about this back in August 2005 but it wasn't viewable until recently, I guess.

Postscript: Philipp has notified me that this is not a new launch. The difference is that Current TV was available on Google Video, but now is also available at www.current.tv/google.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:51 AM | Permalink

February 16, 2006

AOL Leads in Online Conversions; Google Falls in Last

WebSideStory conducted a new study that revealed Conversion Rates for Each Major Search Engine. For the month of January, AOL lead the pack with a conversion rate of 6.17%, followed by MSN with 6.03%, Yahoo with 4.07% and finally Google with 3.83%. The study includes both organic and paid search referrals from the search engines. The study shows that the four major search engines listed above performed "above the median average for all search engines, which was 1.97 percent for the month of January."

Ali Behnam, senior digital marketing consultant for WebSideStory, explained that the possible reason why AOL and MSN have a higher conversion rate when compared to Google and Yahoo is most likely because AOL and MSN are "portals rich in content and services, " which may appeal more towards the "buyer friendly demographic."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:11 AM | Permalink

January 24, 2006

New Poll Finds Web Users Want Google to Keep Data Private; Full Text Access to Report Also Available

Elinor Mills at News.com clues us into a poll conducted over the weekend and reported by Verne Kopytoff in the in the San Francisco Chronicle and Michael Bazeley in the San Jose Mercury News that shows 56% of those surveyed don't want Google handing over any info to the government.

From the SF Chronicle article: As part of the findings, 56 percent of respondents said they do not want Google to turn over any information to the government. More than three quarters of the respondents, or 77 percent, did not even know that Google collected information that personally identifies them. Google keeps records of IP addresses, which can be traced back to individual computers. In cases where the government is trying to prosecute a crime, according to the survey, the respondents were more open to Google sharing information. About 14 percent said that they were willing to give the government access in such cases, while 44 percent said that they were willing in only certain cases.

Mike Bazeley points out that many of those surveyed would stop using Google if they gave the government the data they requested.

From the Mercury News article: More than a third of the survey-takers -- 38 percent -- said they would stop using Google if the company ever turned over information about their searches to the government. The survey did not ask people for opinions about Yahoo, Microsoft or AOL.

The poll was made up of a random sample of 1,017 Internet users over the age of 18 and conducted by the Ponemon Institute [via email], a privacy research organization (aka think tank) group based in Michigan.

I'm interested to see if the search companies who handed over info to the feds (none of it with personally identifiable info as Danny clearly points out here) lose any market share and/or total number of searches in the future due to sharing data with the government.

Also worth a look (if you haven't done so already) is Danny's post: Private Searches Versus Personally Identifiable Searches; a statement from MSN along with plenty of reader comments on MSN Search's WebLog, a review of and links to the court filings, and some background reports on privacy, the Internet and related topics from the Congressional Research Service.

Postscript: Thank you to the The Ponemon Institute who have given us permission to post the the full text of the report containing the results of their recent poll (PDF).

Posted by Gary Price at 5:07 PM | Permalink

January 18, 2006

Report: Chinese Searchers Prefer Google Over Homegrown Baidu

Keynote Systems, a research firm that does annual studies of North American searchers and their satisfaction with search engines, has released its first report on the preferences of Chinese searchers. Looking at a number of different criteria the study ranked user satisfaction with four major search players in China: Alibaba/Yahoo!, Baidu, Google China and Sohu/Sogou, and concluded that Google was the favorite, despite trailing Baidu in market share. Today's SearchDay article, Study: Google #1 in China, has the details.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 11:02 AM | Permalink

January 17, 2006

JumpTap Introduces Keyword Sales Program for Mobile Search and Releases Stats About What Mobile Searchers Are Looking For

JumpTap, a company that offers many mobile search solutions has just introduced a hosted Keyword Sales Program for mobile search providers.

JumpTap's Keyword Sales Program allows mobile operators to leverage the vast potential of performance-based marketing by bringing turnkey, Pay-per-Click and Pay-per-Call programs to mobile handsets.

JumpTap also released their first set of statistics about what people are mobile searchers are looking to find.

Despite conventional wisdom that the numeric keypad would be a barrier for mobile search text entry, searchers still entered unusually long queries, including "don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me", "the killers all the things that i've done", and "what are you doing the rest of your life". The first example query, referring to a ringtone by the Pussycat Dolls, is 45 characters long.

For the month of December 2005, the type of search for the top 100 queries included:

27% Categories. Top 3 terms searched: Christmas, Hockey, WWE (Worldwide Wresting Entertainment).

22% Adult. Top 3 terms searched: Sex, Porn, Girls.

20% Artist Name. Top 3 terms searched: Eminem, 50 Cent, Madonna.

14% Game. Top 3 terms searched: Tetris, Poker, Snake.

9% Music Genre. Top 3 terms searched: Country, Themes, Reggae.

5% Music Title. Top 3 terms searched: My Humps, Jingle Bell, Gold Digger.

3% Website Names. Top 3 terms searched: Google, MSN, Yahoo.

Much more about JumpTap, it's new ad program, and these new statistics in a news release.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:30 AM | Permalink

January 12, 2006

Google Zeitgeist Receives Makeover, New Weekly Edition

A member of the SEW Forums points out that the Google Zeitgeist home page has a new look and features a new weekly edition. If you're interested in comparing, here's the Zeigeist page from April 2005.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:36 PM | Permalink

January 11, 2006

National Stereotypes, Search Activity, Package Tracking & More All Mapped

Thanks to Philipp Lenssen and Nacho Hernandez for alerting us to few new uses of Google Maps and other mapped info. Track your packages, see how people are searching across the world in light and what people think about national stereotypes, all mapped.

+ PackageMapper.com. This is not your run of the mill package traking service but actually allows you to see the routing of your FedEx, UPS, or USPS package. Cool!

+ Google is offering a map that highlights various users of the Google Mini around the United States and Canada. You can view users by industry or all users. Click and you'll receive a pop-up with the name of the company, info on how the mini is used and a testimonial from a person at that company. An impressive use of Google Maps as a marketing tool.

+ The Prejudice Map is a service that Philipp Lenssen has created that combines Google Web Search with a Google Map. What does the map show? For each country, Lenssen has run the Google search, "xxx are known for *" (Examples, "Australians are known for *", "Canadians are known for *", and many other countries and then placed some of the terms he found on the map. No one can ever claim that Philipp doesn't find interesting uses for Google search results.

+ Finally, GB points to this fascinating animated visualization (via Information Aesthetics) that animates daily Google search query distribution across world in 2003." The data comes from Google Labs. I would love to see how this would compare with query distribution last year.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:40 AM | Permalink

January 9, 2006

4INFO's Top SMS Search Queries of 2005

In case you need one more Top Searches of 2005 list, 4INFO recently posted a list of the Top 25 terms queried using 4INFO's SMS (text messaging) service in 2005 along with some analysis of the results.

Here's the Top 10: 1. RED SOX 2. YANKEES 3. NFL 4. PU 5. MLB 6. ASTROS 7. WHITE SOX 8. SHOT 9. HELP 10. DRINK

Posted by Gary Price at 4:08 PM | Permalink

December 23, 2005

December 20, 2005

Google Releases 2005 Year-End Google Zeitgeist

The 2005 Year-End Google Zeitgeist with popular search terms and trends was released today. In the past week, we've heard from most of the large web engines with their year-end lists.

Google's year-end package offers numerous rankings in a variety of categories including: + World Affairs + Nature + Movies + Celebrities + Phenomena

Most categories don't show simple Top 5 or Top 10 lists like we found on other lists. Instead, you'll see charts that allow you to see how certain terms did over certain periods of time and tied to specific events. For example, in the Celebrities section you'll see how Britney, Mariah, and Shakira did over the year and tied to events in their lives. Fun!

Of course, Google does offer a few tradtional lists including: Google.com - Top Gainers of 2005 1. Myspace 2. Ares 3. Baidu 4. wikipedia 5. orkut 6. iTunes 7. Sky News 8. World of Warcraft 9. Green Day 10. Leonardo da Vinci Google News - Top Searches in 2005 1. Janet Jackson 2. Hurricane Katrina 3. tsunami 4. xbox 360 5. Brad Pitt 6. Michael Jackson 7. American Idol 8. Britney Spears 9. Angelina Jolie 10. Harry Potter

Froogle - Top Searches in 2005 1. ipod 2. digital camera 3. mp3 player 4. ipod mini 5. psp 6. laptop 7. xbox 8. ipod shuffle 9. computer desk 10. ipod nano

Year-end Zeitgeist's back to 2001 can be found by clicking on the desired year under the "Yearly Archives" header on the right side of this page.

My post from last Friday that discussed the Dogpile year-end list also includes direct links to the year-end rankings we posted last week from Lycos, Yahoo, AOL and A9.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:21 PM | Permalink

December 16, 2005

Google & Yahoo Make Dogpile's Top Searches Of 2005 List

The week is ending like it began, with the release of a list of Top Searches of 2005 list. Today, we hear from Dogpile. OK, first the usual stuff before moving on to results I find really interesting. Like we've seen on several of the other lists, we learn that people love searching for Paris Hilton. At Dogpile, she's number 2 on the overall list (after "Music Lyrics" in the top spot). However, she's first on the Top Celebrities list. Dogpile released a Top 10 list (overall) and lists for Top Celebrities, Best of the Top 50, and Top Offbeat searches.

Forget Paris! What's interesting, though not a total shock, is that four of the Top 10 overall search terms on the Dogpile metasearch engine were for other search engines and online services. Google is at number 3, eBay at 4, Yahoo at 5, and MapQuest at 6.

I can largely understand eBay and MapQuest making the list. But Google and Yahoo in the Top 10? Fascinating. Btw, I confirmed this with the pr folks from Dogpile to make sure I was reading the list correctly.

First, we're seeing users going from one search engine to get to another.

Second, in Dogpile's case, they already provide results from Google and Yahoo. This really illustrates that lots of searchers don't understand how search works (at even the most BASIC of level). It also shows that Dogpile users are unaware of what the engine they're already using the first place provides (results from Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, and MSN). You've got to wonder if lists from other engines lists have other search tools edited off of the lists. The Dogpile lists also proves what I've said many times before, some of the knowledge that is so very basic to many of us, is still another world (how about universe?) to many people.

Then, when you start thinking about a knowledge of and then the most basic understanding of and about specialty databases, RSS, and so many other things we use daily, it's clear we have a long way to go in terms of user adoption of some of this stuff. I promised myself I wouldn't include more on why user training is so valuable. I've done that enough this year.

Here's the Top 10 Overall List: 1. Music Lyrics 2. Paris Hilton 3. Google 4. eBay 5. Yahoo 6. Mapquest 7. Games Cheat 8. Games 9. Dogs 10. Top 100 Baby Names

Here's a review of the other Top Search lists that were released this week: + Yahoo{ + A9 + AOL + Lycos

Posted by Gary Price at 6:47 PM | Permalink

December 15, 2005

Yahoo Top Searches Of 2005

Top search terms of 2005 week continues. We've had Lycos, AOL, A9 weigh in already on the most popular searches this year. Now Top Searches 2005 - Britney's Back! over at the Yahoo Search Blog gives you Yahoo's rundown for tops in web search (Britney Spears), image search (Jessica Simpson) and video search (Britney again). Head over to 2005 Top Searches, and you can drill down by celebrity (and by sex), sports, products, news, entertainment, top movers and some international top lists.

Who's left? No doubt MSN and Ask will be along soon, plus there's the big G. Google 2004 top terms are here. Using my amazing deductive powers that each year-end list at Google uses the format of zeitgeistYEAR.html, I predict you'll see Google's list at http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist2005.html in the very near future. So bloggers, start your page watching monitors to see when it changes, for bragging rights to be the first to say it's live.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:50 AM | Permalink

December 14, 2005

The A9 Top 99 Search Terms of 2005; All Terms Contain Nine Letters

I said the other day it's the Top Search Terms of 2005 rankngs time of the year and we've already had releases this week from Lycos and AOL. Today it's A9's turn. However, A9 does something different unlike what we usually see elsewhere.. Most often, year-end top search term lists that have rankings divided into various categories (music, film, people). What makes A9 different? They only rank the Top 99 search terms that contain nine letters.

I'm so glad the Paris Hilton contains a space and ten letters. This is one list she's not on. (-: Btw, A9 uses the Google database to power its web engine.

Here's the Top 10 of the The A9 Top 99 of 2005

equipment
refinance
furniture
insurance
marketing
wholesale
christian
treatment
corporate
directory

The complete list can be found here.

Thanks to Michael Fagan of FaganFinder and URLInfo fame for the news tip.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:01 PM | Permalink

December 13, 2005

AOL Releases List of 2005's Top Search Terms

I mentioned yesterday that the "Top Searches of 2005" season was underway with the release of a top terms from Lycos. Today, it's AOL's turn with their compilation of top searches on AOL Search.

Here's the Overall Top 10: 1. Lottery 2. Horoscopes 3. Tattoos 4. Lyrics 5. Ringtones 6. IRS 7. Jokes 8. American Idol 9. Hairstyles 10. NASCAR

Interesting to see lottery and IRS both in the Top 10. (-;

The rest of the AOL page top searches is divided into 20 more categories. Here are a few "number ones" in various categories:

+ Top People: Paris Hilton (Ms. Hilton was the nunber one search overall on Lycos). I really want to rant right now but it's not worth it.

+ Top Person Under 21: Lindsay Lohan

+ Top Person Over 40: Oparah Winfrey Howard Stern at number 2. Wow, I now qualify for this category. (-: + Top Video Searches: Fifty Cent Paris Hilton comes in at number two.

+ Top Song: We Belong Together- Mariah Carey Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl" is at number 2.

+ Top Gadgets? Here's the full list: 1. iPods 2. Cell Phones 3. Playstation 3 4. Xbox 360 5. MP3 Players 6. XM Radio 7. Laptops 8. Palm Pilots 9. Sirius Radio I just got my new portable S50. Very cool but I've also learned that purchasing some first generation tech has issues. 10. GPS Devices

Want More? As I said at the beginning of the post this collection of top searches is divided into 21 categories. So, have some fun, take a look, and then do some browsing and debating (or blogging, if you need to vent).

Thanks to Andy at Marketing Pilgrim for the news tip.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:05 PM | Permalink

December 12, 2005

Lycos Kicks off the "Top Search Terms of the Year" Season

Well, it's that time of the year when the top search term lists begin appearing. It's a holiday of sorts for pop culture fanatics and search junkies. Today, we begin the journey with the release of the Lycos list from the Lycos 50 of the most popular Internet search terms of 2005.

Here's the complete list of the Top 100 Terms. Now, some higlights (if you want to call them that).

Top 10 Search Terms (in parentheses is last year's rank) 1. Paris Hilton (2) 2. Pamela Anderson (8) 3. Britney Spears (4) 4. Poker (10) 5. Dragonball (13) 6. Jennifer Lopez (28) 7. WWE (17) 8. Pokemon (33) 9. Playstation (24) 10. Hurricane Katrina (-)

Well, Paris stays hot (isn't that great? Not!) while Pam makes a big jump up the list. New mom Britney stays at about the same plunge Taking the plunge is Janet Jackson who drops to 55 after being number one in 2004. It looks like the lack of any wardrobe malfunctions might have played a role. (-: Finally, we really love searching for poker, Pokemon, DragonBall, and Playstation.

Lycos also takes a look at the Top 50 Women on the Web in 2005 in this article. Mariah Carey gets the Rookie of the Year Award. Mariah? Rookie? Interesting, Mariah's comeback makes her a rookie as far as to what Lycos searcher's have to say.

Other Categories + Most Searched Man: Enimen From the news release, some interesting comparitive numbers between Mr. Mathers and 50 Cent. "{Eminem generated] 25 percent more searches than his protégé 50 Cent and 36 percent more popular than Usher."

+ Top TV Show Search: The Simpsons Homer and family dethrone American Idol after search interest in Simon, Paula, and Randy's program dropped 63% in 2005. No sign of William Huang on any list.

+ Top News Search As expected it was Hurrican Katrina at #1 and the the term Tsunami at #2.

+ Top Fads Most make sense as 2005 goes but I must say I was surprised by "free credit report" (that's a fad?) and crochet. Well, I'm more of a knitting man myself. (-:

Predictions: People and Trends to Watch in 2006 Lycos reports that, Based on growing search queries, The Lycos 50 predicts these are the ones to watch in 2006: + Bird flu or Avian flu (let's hope not) + Reggae rapper Daddy Yankee + Reggaeton music fad + Singer Ciara + Singers Pharrell Williams and Natasha Bedingfield?Rap + Group Threesix Mafia + Rrapper Young Jeezy + Golf phenomenon Natalie Gulbis + Teen TV drama, Degrassi, The Next Generation + Video Games: Freecycle

Here are other breakout lists from Lycos:

Top 10 Women of 2005: 1) Paris Hilton 2) Pamela Anderson 3) Britney Spears 4) Jennifer Lopez 5) Brooke Burke 6) Tara Reid 7) Angelina Jolie 8) Lindsay Lohan 9) Carmen Electra 10) Hilary Duff

Top 10 Men of 2005: 1) Eminem 2) 50 Cent 3) Tupac Shakur 4) Usher 5) Clay Aiken 6) Andy Milonakis 7) Howard Stern 8) Michael Jackson 9) Bow Wow 10) Brad Pitt

Top 10 Bands of 2005: 1) Green Day 2) Slipknot 3) Metallica 4) Linkin Park 5) The Beatles 6) U2 7) Good Charlotte 8) My Chemical Romance 9) Fall Out Boy 10) Pretty Ricky

Top 10 Films of 2005: 1) Harry Potter & Goblet of Fire 2) Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith 3) Batman Begins 4) Dukes of Hazzard 5) Charlie & the Chocolate Factor 6) Fantastic Four 7) Exorcism of Emily Rose 8) Sin City 9) Constantine 10) Hitch

Top News Stories of 2005: 1) Hurricane Katrina 2) Tsunami 3) War in Iraq 4) Petra Nemcova 5) Hurricane Rita 6) September 11th 7) Pope John Paul II 8) Peter Jennings 9) Rosa Parks 10) Gas Prices

Top Fads of 2005: 1) Poker 2) iPod 3) RuneScape 4) Blackjack 5) Free Credit Report 6) Yoga 7) Rate Your Professor 8) Texas Hold 'Em 9) Freecycle 10) Crochet

Top Television Shows of 2005: 1) The Simpsons 2) Teen Titans 3) American Idol 4) Smallville 5) Big Brother 6) South Park 7) Lost 8) Family Guy 9) Survivor 10) Charmed

Top 10 Sports Stars of 2005: 1) Anna Kournikova 2) Serena Williams 3) Maria Sharapova 4) Candice Michell 5) John Cena 6) Danica Patrick 7) Michael Jordan 8) Martina Hingis 9) David Beckham 10) Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Dean Tsouvalas has much more onn The Lycos 50 home page including links to rankings back to 2002.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:07 PM | Permalink

December 1, 2005

The UK Goes "Searching" for Broadband

So what's the most popular product search in the UK? According to Hitwise and this article from Netimperative it's "broadband."

Internet research firm Hitwise found that the term ?broadband? was the top product search term sending visits to retail websites for the week ending 26 November 2005, with a 35% year-on-year increase in the volume of UK searches. ?Offline advertising has led to brand name searches online, with 9 of the top 20 search terms that include the keyword ?broadband? including the name of a provider.?

More Numbers Hitwise data shows that searches for ?bulldog broadband? were up 899% year-on-year last week, searches for ?virgin broadband? were up 20%, and searches for ?toucan broadband? were up 272%. The most popular generic searches (those that do not include a brand name) for broadband are ?broadband providers?, ?cheap broadband? and ?broadband deals?, the figures reveal.

Want more stats on popular search terms? Make sure to visit the Hitwise Intelligence compiled by Bill Tancer and his team. It's one of those sites that's interesting, fun, and useful.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:56 PM | Permalink

November 29, 2005

Travel Searchers Still Hitting General Search Engines

Partnerships are key to online travel search survival from Reuters covers some stats and developments with travel search. Only 6.5 percent of travelers have used travel search engines, compared to 44 percent who use a travel agency, data from Forrester has found. About 27 percent turned to general purpose search engines like Google or Yahoo, rather than meta search sites -- though what's not said is some of them no doubt clicked on results that led them to more specialized travel search sites.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:09 AM | Permalink

November 22, 2005

Search Marketing Working for Comparison Shopping Sites

The holiday shopping season is in full swing, and aggressive search marketing on the part of comparison shopping sites is paying off. Google and Yahoo! Search sent 25 percent more visits to the ten leading shopping comparison sites versus last year (week ending November 19, 2005 versus the week ending November 20, 2004), according to Hitwise.

U.S visits to retail websites accounted for 9.32 percent of all visits to the Internet, last week, and the top growing retail categories were:

Flowers and Gifts (up 13.4%); Ticketing (up 11.5%); Department Stores (up 10.5%); Rewards and Directories (up 9.7%) and Appliances and Electronics (up 8.3%).

Other data from Hitwise:

Retail (9.32 percent) was the second most popular online category after Adult (16.8%). Retail is again ahead of Email sites (8.9 percent).

The leading product-related search terms driving traffic to retail Web sites were "ipod," "furniture," "auto parts," "lingerie," "tires," "toys," "mp3 players," "xbox 360," "flowers" and "ipod mini."

Hitwise offers more holiday related stats over on the Hitwise Intelligence blog.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 1:01 PM | Permalink

November 20, 2005

Search Overtaking Email as Most Popular Online Activity

New research from Pew Internet & American Life tracking surveys and consumer behavior trends from the comScore Media Metrix consumer panel show that about 60 million American adults are using search engines on a typical day. This is a big jump from last year, from 30% to 41% of the internet-using population searching every day. If these trends continue, the use of search engines may well overtake email as the primary internet activity in our daily online lives.

I plan to take a closer look at the report later in the week; if you can wait, a summary and link to the full PDF report are available on this page.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 6:17 PM | Permalink

November 17, 2005

Tasty: Searching for Recipes Increases

The Media Daily News Brief: Hitwise: Recipe Searches Surge, discusses some new numbers that show people are looking for recipes on the web as Thanksgiving Day approaches here in the U.S.

From the article: Almost Half--48 Percent--Of Visits To food and beverage reference sites originated at search engines for the week ending Nov. 12, according to numbers released by Hitwise Wednesday. The research group considered that a high number compared to shopping and classifieds and grocery and alcohol sites, which received 30 percent of upstream visits from search engines over that period. The share of searches for "recipes" was up 25 percent for the week ending Nov. 12, versus the prior week, and visits to the top 10 recipe sites were up 9 percent in the same period.

You can find more info including a table of top sites in this news release.

Just for fun. If you're interested in just what recipes are searching for:

From the news release: What recipes are consumers searching for leading up to Thanksgiving? Hitwise Search Intelligence data reveals that of the leading search terms sending visits to Food and Beverage - Reference sites, those with the largest increases for the week ending Nov. 12, 2005 compared to the previous week were: "butternut squash recipes" up 279 percent, "sweet potato casserole" up 130 percent, "thanksgiving recipes" up 89 percent, and "green bean casserole" up 74 percent.

And speaking of recipe search... Recently, Ask Jeeves launched a Smart Answer that places direct links to recipe info at the top of web results pages.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:28 PM | Permalink

November 11, 2005

Google Provides Search Stats By Industry Sector

Nice spot by that man Peter Da Vanzo of (The Original) Search Engine Blog, a page over at Google full of metrics about how people in different industries search. Pitching that travel client on search? Help yourself to some stats from Google to help close the sale, for example.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:36 AM | Permalink

November 8, 2005

Why We Use Various Search Engines

InternetRetailer has done some nice charts off of a Majestic Research/comScore report looking at why we use particular search engines (for Google, it's the results; for others, it's because you're doing other things). The stats also look at awareness of paid links and tolerance of demographic and behavior targeting. Here's a summary:

For the question of why people use particular search engines, top reasons for each major service were:

Google: 68 percent say it's because it has the best results.
AOL: 65 percent say it's because they are doing other things at AOL, like checking mail and other non-search activities.
MSN: 63 percent say it's just like AOL, because they are doing other things there.
Yahoo: 52 percent say it's just like AOL, because they are doing other things there. Yahoo got the second highest marks for having the best results after Google, with 33 percent choosing that reason.

The report found that AOL and Google users were the most likely to notice sponsored links (82 and 81 percent, respectively) while MSN users were the least likely to notice them (69 percent).

As for privacy, 58 percent said they weren't worried about being demographically or behaviorally targeted as long as it was disclosed and they could opt out. And 27 percent said they'd keep using a search engine even if they couldn't opt out.

Haven't tracked down the actual report yet; will postscript, if I can find it.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:11 PM | Permalink

November 7, 2005

Getting the Airfare Buzz from Kayak.com

Kayak Buzz from travel search engine/aggregator Kayak allows the searcher to see what are the "'best fares'" to the most searched destinations from any airport in the world based on the searches other Kayak users have conducted. Your results are mapped on a Google Map. I wonder if they'll try it with MSN or Yahoo Maps?

The service combines some of the most popular ideas and topics in the online/search world today (below in no specific order):

Using the web to spot "buzz"
Google Maps
Mashups
Communities of Users
Vertical Search and travel search aggregators

Let's run a search. We'll search for the best 25 fares from Chicago-O'Hare Airport (ORD). You can enter a city or airport code. If you enter a city name, a drop down appear with choices of airports.

Enter ORD
Click the "Get the Buzz Button"
A Google Map will appear with colored icons (depending on the fare) next to the cities for the best 25 fares
In the left column, you'll see a list of fare prices and cities. You can limit to a specific price range by moving the slider
Now, click on the city name on the list of map
I'll select Phoenix. A pop-up appears with the price someone paid, the travel dates, the source of the fare, and how many searches the price is based on.
Remember, if you search for the same fare you might not get it. Why? You might be traveling on different dates and airline fares are constantly changing.

Bottom Line: Fun and interesting technology that might even turn you on to a great airfare.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:10 AM | Permalink

November 1, 2005

Apparel Buyers Really, Really Like Search

New research from Yahoo and Compete, Inc. tracked Internet search and transaction activity related to retail apparel Web sites over one year. The study found that search was used by 20% of the 25 million unique monthly visitors, but also found that nearly 80% of all people who purchased apparel offline after using Internet search reported that search influenced their store visit and purchase. Apparel searchers also spent more than 30% more time when visiting retail sites than non-search visitors.

These results are from Yahoo's continuing "Life Series" that's examining the relationships between search and major activities in our daily lives. The previous study looked at financial services. The press release for today's findings is not yet online but will be available at Yahoo's Press Center when posted.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 4:41 PM | Permalink

October 21, 2005

Google Releases New Keyword Research Tool To Advertisers

New Keyword Popularity Tool Debuts in Adwords Accounts over in our SEW Forums has SEW forum editor Elisabeth Osmelowski spotting the new Google AdWords Keyword Tool and inviting discussion. Aaron Wall over at SEO Book in New Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool provides a nice rundown on what it offers, including sorting by popularity, performance history, cost and predicted ad position. He also points at a new page of tips from Google about the new tool.

I took a quick spin myself. Enter a term, and you get back a list ranked by "relevance," though Google doesn't really explain what relevance is despite a help page supposedly answering this. I mean, if I enter [cars] into the search box, why exactly is "rental cars" more relevant than "donate cars?"

Using a drop down box, the "Keyword Popularity" option is much more helpful. Now I can see a new Search Volume column. Unlike with Yahoo's tool, there aren't counts given. Instead, PageRank-like bars show popularity, the more green, the better. Click on the Search Volume hyperlink above the column, and now things sort by popularity. Slick! It's something you couldn't do with the old tool.

Check out the Site-Related Keywords tab on the new tool. Enter the URL of a page, and Google will show you all the key terms it thinks the page is relevant for. That's nice for contextual targeting, the intent of the tool. But it's also a useful way to see what terms Google thinks an important page is relevant for. Or enter your own page, and see if Google's finding you relevant for the terms you think you should be targeting.

Want to discuss or comment? Contribute in our New Keyword Popularity Tool Debuts in Adwords Accounts thread.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:02 AM | Permalink

October 20, 2005

Shoppers Use Web as Research Tool Before Heading to the Store

An article by Wendy Davis on the Media Daily News site: Study: Tech Purchasers Consult Web First, takes a look at some survey results published yesterday saying that shoppers, who visit brick-and-mortar stores, first use the web as a research tool.

What's more, shoppers rely far more heavily on the Internet for product information than on TV, radio, or magazines, concluded the study. "The Internet is climbing in usage and purchasing influence, magazines, TV and radio are being marginalized and newspaper influence, while still strong, appears increasingly limited to coupon offers and sale notifications,"

The study is titled: Impact of Online Research on Off-Line Retail Buying: Predispositions and Outcomes" and was conducted by the CMO Council and The ConsumerEdge Research Group. It was sponsored by Yahoo.

We've posted the full text (pdf) of the report (lots of graphs) here.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:13 AM | Permalink

October 14, 2005

New Research on How We Search

Two new studies give further weight to the growing importance of search in our lives. iCrossing, New York, and Harris Interactive interviewed more than 2,300 people and found that 77 percent of adults who research online before making a purchase decision use search engines.

DMNews has more:

Forty percent of those conducting online research go to search engines first. Still, 57 percent use retailer Web sites to research products before making a decision.

The study also found that the same number of people -- one-third -- search by brand as much they do by general category of product and/or service. Men use search engines more when researching a product: 69 percent compared to 65 percent of women.

Separately, Yahoo Search Marketing looked at the search behavior of college students and found that they rely more on search engines than any other media--including magazines, newspapers, and television ads.

Media Post reports:

81 percent of college students rated search engines as the best source of information; friends and family were rated best by 64 percent of students, while just 34 percent said traditional media was their best source of information.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:34 PM | Permalink

Short Queries Maybe More Sophisticated Than We Think

I Hate Search. Don't Hate Search. Now, I Speak Search. Next week, "I Heart Search" and "I Grok Search" will be coming, as well as "Search On Board." But back to I Speak Search, Gord Hotchkiss's article in MediaPost today. He suggests that maybe searchers are more sophisticated than we think, even if they only use a few words when searching. "We have learned how to make a few words go a long way," he writes and wonders if terse, Hemmingway-like searches may translate into how we deal with each other.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:39 AM | Permalink

October 6, 2005

Hitwise Blogs Search Stats

Hitwise is a great source of data about what people search for, and Bill Tancer over there who heads global research has started up a new blog here already filled with some nice gems.

Search Term Pairs looks at spikes for searches on engagement rings versus wedding dresses. Notes from Vegas: Search Terms and the Competitive Substitute looks at how searches for online poker go up as sports betting drop, making him wonder if the same people are doing both but can't afford to do both at the same time.

Batman is in, Elmo is out tells me the Thunderbirds costumes I got for the kids for Halloween aren't making the top ten list of terms containing costumes. Guess I should be dressing them up like pirates, the top term, or Batman, the second. Pirate was a top term last year. Elmo, it turns out, is not.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:07 PM | Permalink

September 28, 2005

Better Yahoo Tools Coming To Measure Search Buzz - And Watch Google, Too!

Yahoo! Testing New Branding Metrics for Search at ClickZ covers how Yahoo is helping more advertisers tap into tools to measure brand reach and buzz through search, a sign that tracking search buzz is finally getting some needed, renewed attention.

Many are familiar with Yahoo Buzz, the consumer-facing service that shows what's hot in search. Not so well known is another version that advertisers and others can tap into. Yahoo has had that product for years. It's not new, as the story suggests. Instead, it sounds like it's being given a revamp in preparation for wider positioning. A new "Search Share Of Voice" tool is also planned.

It's long overdue for greater outreach like this. As we've had more and more "word-of-mouth" tools designed to measure blog buzz, it's seemed forgotten that search engines have access to much more broad web buzz based on what wide, everyday audiences are looking for and writing about.

FYI, Google's got a similar tools it developed to help CurrentTV do Google Zeitgeist segments. I asked Google a couple of weeks ago whether these tools might be rolled out for others to use, when talking about them. It's something Google has in mind, but there were no immediate plans to do so. So we watch and see!

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:25 AM | Permalink

September 26, 2005

For Many, It's All About the Very First Search Result

Jakob Nielsen's new Alertbox article: The Power of Defaults, does a great job of summarizing and commenting on new search engine research from Cornell University about why and where people click on a search results page.

From Nielsen's article: Search engine users click the results listings' top entry much more often than can be explained by relevancy ratings. Once again, people tend to stick to the defaults. This study goes far to address why users tend to click on the top hit. There are two plausible explanations:

Search engines are so good at judging relevancy that they almost always place the best hit on top.
Users click the top hit not because it's any better, but simply because it's first. This might be due to sheer laziness (after all, you start from the top) or because users assume the search engine places the best hit on top, whether that's actually true or not. As the study shows, the answer is clearly a little of both.
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