Last Friday I took a snap survey about how readers of this blog and ValleyPRblog use search engines.
Interesting results, as always. Meaning, you get to know the different ways people use something we take for granted.
- 60 Percent use a search engine from a tool-bar they have installed on their browser.
- When using search, 75 Percent Always click on Natural Search results first (12 Percent said never!)
- Only 7 Percent first click on Paid results first (60 Percent never go there first)
- Interestingly, 57 Percent click on Natural and Paid results 'Sometimes' (of the choices Always, Sometimes, and never)
- 38 Percent Always scroll down to the bottom of the page to view the results (50 Percent do it Sometimes, 12 Percent Never go there; 50 Percent do it sometimes.
- 44 Percent are darn persistent, and Always click on the next page of results
What might this mean? Remember this was not a scientifically selected sample. But they were random, no doubt, and more importantly, people like you, probably.
I used to work at an interactive marketing agency, and the thinking at that time was that clients were putting way too much money on Paid Search, and neglecting finding ways to get high ranking on the Natural results. Natural (or 'Organic' Search) is the industry term for getting the search engine web crawlers or 'spiders' to rank your web site on the left side of a results page.
Translated into marketing, this means spending a lot more time with optimizing those pages on your site so that they are Google and Yahoo friendly.
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