A Look at Searcher Behavior and Search Intent

Search behavior has changed in the past year and it’s important to know how it’s changed and what your website can do to adapt to the changes in search behavior. Searchers become so familiar with using search engines that they almost do searches on “auto pilot.”

During the search, the eyes focus on the top left of the search results and branch out.

Typically this behavior becomes second nature and searchers rarely search any deeper than the first page. As searchers do this, it allows their brains to fully interact with the results that they find. When a searcher is reviewing the search results, they may “pattern match” keywords in the search results to determine relevancy to their goal.

Once a search has been triggered, there is always research before action takes place. Most searches take less than 3 minutes before a new search is started. The more conditioned a person is to search, the faster they search.

Search Frequency:

• There are an estimated 3 trillion searches per year on Google. That equals about 8.2 billion per day.

Social Media & Search:

Google dominates the search market as the leading search engine; however, social media search is increasing causing alternate search engines, such as YouTube, to become competitors of Google.

Video search has drastically increased due to YouTube. Local, Image, and Social Networking sites also feature video search. Milestone’s promotion strategy has expanded to include many Social Media sites in our new promotion strategies.

As more people search for places to travel to, pictures and videos are powerful tools in conversion as social media sites grow in familiarity and use. Although paid search can be a powerful tool for promotion, organic is still king and should be the primary focus of promotion strategies.

• Allocate some budget for the alternative search engines, the traditional search engines are still most commonly used.

Organic vs. Paid Search:

Organic has had the greatest growth in clicks at 32% versus last year. Conversely, people are clicking on fewer paid links. Help people find your site by using good content and easy navigation. Create Brand awareness that will build into a relationship with the searcher. Milestone’s promotions should still focus on organic search.

• Organic clicks are greater than paid – use organic for branding
• Build Brand through Organic search

As more people are using the internet to get information, it’s important to realize that people are becoming more conditioned to search and barely use any thought when conducting a search. Especially when sites such as YouTube are emerging as major search engines that enable people a visual preview of what they are searching for.