Useful Search Marketing Statistics

March 10th, 2007 Jackie

The Basics

• The share of searches performed in the US as of July 2006: Google 49.2%, Yahoo 23.8%, MSN 9.6%, AOL 6.3% and Ask 2.6%.
  Source: Searchenginewatch.com/Nielsen Netratings 

Response Rate by Position

• The top three organic listings are viewed 100% of the time, with lower positioned listings getting incrementally less attention as follows: rank 4 (85%), rank 5 (60%) rank 6 & 7 (50%), rank 8 and 9 (30%), rank 10 (10%).
  Source: Eyetools, Enquiro & Did-it.com Eyetracking Study.
• The top paid search listing is viewed 50% of the time, with lower positioned listings getting incrementally less attention as follows: rank 2 (40%), rank 3 (30%), rank 4 (20%), rank 5-8 (10%)
  Source: Eyetools, Enquiro & Did-it.com Eyetracking Study.

Conversion Rates for Paid v.s Organic Search Listings

• Conversion rates for paid vs. organic listings are nearly identical, with B-to-C conversion rates for paid search at about 3.40% vers 3.13% for organic search results.

The Retail Channel

• 25% of conversions occurring from users who click on more than one ad
• Branded search offer the highest conversion rate (9.3%) occurring when a user’s first and last click resulted on searching for a branded term. 
• When the first click was the result of a nonbranded search and the last click on a branded search, the conversion rate was slightly lower at 8.73%.
• For searchers who began their search using a nonbranded term, but ended with a branded query, conversion rates were seven times higher than when they used only nonbranded terms.
• Only 8.4% of searchers used multiple unique keywords, but they accounted for nearly 20% of transactions.
  Source: 360i and SearchIgnite

Market Growth for Paid Search

• The average number of active keywords in Q1 2006 was up 36% compared with Q1 2005
• The total number of clicks to paid search ads rose 24%
• Sales from paid search ads increased by 72%, as measured in dollars
  During the December 2005 holiday season, nearly 30% of clicks came from keywords costing .50 per click or more, but that proportion dropped to 20% in March 2006
  Source: Doubleclick Performics 50 Search Trend Report Q1 2006
• Search spend increased by 44% from 2004 to 2005, with advertisers spending 5.75 billion in search in 2005 and 64% from 2005 to 2006 (or 9.45 billion) (Source: SEMPO)
• In 2006, SEM programs were primarily funded by shifting budgets from offline media including print magazines (20%), Direct mail (16%), TV advertising (13%), newspaper advertising (13%) (Source: SEMPO)

Entry Filed under: E-Marketing Advice