Search Engine Traffic: Does it Really Lead to Sales?

I have received lots of emails asking me about search engine campaigns and whether or not they drive quality traffic = click to sales to their website, and how to integrate regular search, on the likes of Google Search, Yahoo! Search, MSN Search, Looksmart and Ask.com, with shopping comparison search using comparison shopping engines.

I believe that intelligent online marketers can increase their ROI (return on investment) whether they use just search engines as Yahoo!, Google, MSN Search, Looksmart or Ask.com OR comparison shopping engines as Shopzilla, PriceGrabber, Pricerunner, Smarter, GolfPricer.com, Ciao, or over 100 others....OR, and I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS APPROACH, use BOTH.

The reason that I recommend both as that a combined, or integrated, campaign will increase organic search and traffic to your site.  So here are some statistics that I thought you all should see.

The information below is from "Major Search Engine Traffic Analysis" as presented by representatives from Hitwise, Neilsen/NetRatings and others at the 2007 search Engine Strategies conference in London.  The data is almost 10 months old but relevant none the less.

-- Chip

Retail Websites Receive 25 Percent Of Their Traffic From Search Engines

Over past two years, significant changes have occurred in the way U.S. Internet users search. The following are some key changes in how search has impacted traffic to Shopping websites.

In May 2007, search engines were responsible for 25 percent of visits going to Shopping websites, an increase of 0.7 percent since May 2006.

Google is the most prominent source of traffic for Shopping websites, and is growing more rapidly as a source of shopping traffic than the search engine category as a whole. In May 2007, Google accounted for 15.6 percent of Shopping visits, an increase of 8.7 percent since May 2006.

Single word search queries (including domain and URL searches) accounted for 23.7 percent of search terms sending traffic to Shopping websites in May 2007. This number increased by 20 percent since May 2005, indicating that search toolbars are being used more frequently as a primary means of navigation.

Source: Hitwise

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• 93% of all internet traffic is generated from internet search engines
• 89% of them are first-time visitors
• 99% of internet searchers do not search beyond the top 30 results
• 97% of them never look beyond the top three results
• Top 10 positions receive 78% more traffic than those in positions 11-30
• 65% of online revenue is generated from websites in the top three positions on search engine results pages (SERPs)
• 93% of global consumers use search engines to find websites
• 76.7% of Google users use the natural search links (organic, unpaid listings)

Source: Forrester Research, 2006

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And here are some figures from February 2007...which have only gotten better over the last year. Note: The research institutes usually take a year to update their data to esnure accuracy.

These search engine statistics were presented by representatives from Hitwise, Neilsen/NetRatings and others at the recent Search Engine Strategies conference in London.

Global search engine use:

• 256 million people visited a search engine in December 2006 – this represents 81% of global internet users.
• The global search audience has grown by 10% over the last year, while the total Internet audience grew 8%.
• Search engine use grew dramatically in France (27%) and Spain (21%), ahead of the US (8%), though the US remains the largest search market
• Search is most popular in the UK (85%), France (83%) and Spain (83%). For the US, the figure is 77%.
  The average search engine user views 93 search pages a month, taking an average of 27 minutes.
  Google’s global dominance:
• Google’s audience has grown almost 2.5 times the rate of search’s. It now has almost 3 times the audience of Yahoo Search.
• Google had a 71.6% share of the global search market between August 2006 and January 2007.
  In the same period, Yahoo had an 11.1% share of the market.
• From January 20 to February 12 this year, Google’s share dropped to 67.1%