Search is Losing Steam
As users become more familiar with their favorite sites, it logically follows that they will have less and less use for a search engine. In fact, comScore’s 4th quarter 2005 survey found that it was the first quarter since this data has been measured that search growth slowed to single digit percentages. Basically, Web users already know the sites they want to visit and that they will return to later on.
Users are not as wide-eyed and lost as they were before. They know the sites they like, and will visit new sites if they hear about them from friends, other sites, or some other resource. Nielsen/NetRatings’ Ken Cassar recently hinted that search activity makes up only 5% of overall online activity.
What about the other 95% of the time? Cassar indicated that 41% of the time users are visiting communication sites, while 35% of the time they are digesting content, and for the remaining 19% of the time they are shopping. Combine this knowledge with the fact that excluding click through rates and conversions, only 9% of Internet traffic comes from search, and you may begin to see what industry experts are seeing: a trend toward Web navigation and away from exploration that may usher in a new era.
Participants at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in New York City seem to see this trend and think that marketers should shift their eyes slightly towards virally charged social networks such as MySpace and YouTube, both of which have outdone the likes of Google and Yahoo. MySpace obtains more page views than Google, and YouTube has overtaken Google Video and Yahoo Video.
Google seems to acknowledge the importance of navigable content delivery as they continue to introduce peripheral services such as Google Books, Video, and Chat, among others. Their partnership with Amazon concerning the development of the A9 search engine solidifies this notion.
In the past, the burden of finding content was shouldered by Web users, but with these continuing trends it would appear that the burden has shifted onto search engines’ broad shoulders.
Source:
http://www.webpronews.com/insidesearch/
insidesearch/wpn-56-20060228TheChanging
SearchLandscape.html
