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Hitwise Intelligence - Alan Long - Asia Pacific

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Searches getting longer

November 25, 2009

Last week I spoke at Search Engine Room in Sydney and presented some of the trends we are seeing in how Australian’s interactions with search Engines are changing.

There has been a global trend that my international colleagues have been reporting on for some time – the lengthening of search terms.

The above chart compares the week ending 14 November with the corresponding week in the previous three years and highlights a single year (year on year) decrease in one word search terms of 2.3% and two word search terms of 1.9%.

In contrast search requests longer than three words have increased over the past 12 months by 2.8%, returning to the levels of 2006 and 2007. Four - words have increased 1.2% and 5 words plus have seen a solid increase over the past two years, with a 1.2% increase in the past 12 months.

It’s probably no surprise to see Google.com.au drive the outcomes of the overall industry as it accounts for 74.7% of all searches in week ending 14 November 2009.

There are differences between the Search Engines with Bing’s search queries having a far greater proportion of single and two word requests, 56.2% versus Google.com.au’s 46.7%, Google.com’s 47.0% and Yahoo!7 Search’s 48.1%. One explanation may be the older profile of Bing.com’s audience compared to the Search Engine industry, but I’ll save that analysis for another day.

So what does it mean?

Users are getting more specific with their search engine requests leading to higher search success rates, illustrating how the more specific a request, the more likely a Search Engine is to accurately fulfill that request.

For marketers it is important to treat each Search Engine individually as they each have their own subtle differences. The long tail remains an important consideration and the application of strategies on one Search Engine may not be the optimal approach on another.

In my next update I will look at search success rates and the trends in navigational (branded) search in Australia.

26 November 2009

In response to Seamus's comment below here's a a further comparison breaking out the search term length by word and comparing 2009 and 2008.

Tweet Posted by Alan Long at 04:19 PM | (4) | (0)

Comments

Alan, great job. Last year you broke it down further and reported a 8+ keyword growth statistic. Do you have that data that you can share?

Best regards,

Seamus Walsh

Posted by seamus walsh | November 26, 2009 02:19 AM

An expression longer than 5 words, accounting for almost a sixth of Google queries, is likely to have a structure. It won't be just a bunch of words, but rather it will start to exhibit a grammar. In other words it is going to be a more and more complete sentence.

The query, whether a question or a statement, is starting to be part of a conversation!

If search engines recognize this, the development and deployment of conversational interfaces will be a major shift in the industry.

Posted by David Orban | November 26, 2009 05:40 PM

Interesting finding, I do believe that we are all getting better at Search (all being it slowly) as a skill!

Posted by Search1x | December 4, 2009 05:46 PM

Thanks Alan, interesting stats.

Looking forward to the next post on search success rates and trends.

Posted by Online Analytics | December 15, 2009 10:28 PM