Search Engine Strategies: Searcher Behavior: Keynote Systems
Just attended my first session here at Search Engine Strategies New York. Called “Searcher Behavior”, it dealt with three companies that had conducted studies of the patterns searchers use. Hopefully I’ll get hard facts and figures soon, but for now, I can recount what I heard.
Dr. Bonny Brown, director of research and public services for Keynote Systems, presented a study on the relationship between user satisfaction and ad activity. A big surprise was that the lower a user’s satisfaction level was, the more likely that user was to click on an ad. While Google had the highest level of satisfaction, its ad click rate (percentage-wise) was much lower than that of less popular and less satisfactory engines, like Ask Jeeves. Maybe Jeeves does have the right idea putting all those ads up front…
The study was conducted twice, both last May and again more recently, and while Google had the highest satisfaction level both times, the gap is shrinking radically. Second place Yahoo and third place MSN are closing fast.
The inverse relationship between user experience and ad clicking is striking. Google’s ad activity was a third of Jeeves. However, because so many people use Google, its actual ad revenues are something like eight times that of Jeeves. If Google could sell ads like Jeeves does without pissing off users, its profits would be in the $10 billion a year range. MSN and Yahoo may be trying to hit a magic spot, where its satisfaction is closing on Google, while ad percentages remain much higher.
In terms of user frustration, local search is 100% more frustrating than regular, due to the sometimes terrible relevancy accross all local engines. 95% of those in the study use Google at some point, 64% use it as their primary, but 1 in 2 say they would switch if a better engine crossed their path.
Of those in the survey, 92% use a product search engine. eBay has a an average page views per session number of 8.1, much higher than Google’s 3.7.
And, not surprisingly, relevance was the single dominant factor determining user satisfaction.
[…] er, those ad clicks are offset by their lower traffic, caused by those very same ads. The research presented back a […]
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