Jupiter Research and iProspect conducted a survey involving 2,369 participants from an online consumer panel in the U.S. to study search-related behavior. To no one’s surprise, the study concluded that most search engine users want to see what they are looking for in the first search results page, and that at most they will peruse through three pages before moving on.
Additional findings included the conclusion that a third of Web users associate companies included on the first page of search results with top brand names. Also, 62% of the participants clicked on a result shown on the first page, which was an increase from the 48% in 2002. About 90% of users clicked on a link within these pages, which is up from the 81% that clicked in 2002. If a user did not find what they wanted to see on the first page, 41% of them tried using another search engine or another search term.
Robert Murray, president of marketing firm iProspect, said that the research study conveys the “increased importance of being found in the first top search results.” He added that as users and search engines become better at their respective search processes, users naturally expect to see most of what they want on the first page.
Murray also said that businesses should take notice, if they have not already. “It should be clear that to be effective, marketers need to take action to ensure that their company is found in the top search results on a broad range of search terms and not just single word generic terms,” he said.
Editor in chief of Search Engine Watch Danny Sullivan was not surprised by these findings, saying that this has always been the case for businesses, and that the keys to producing good sites that are near the top of results pages are “good pages, text-rich content, and good links pointing to you.”
Source:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4900742.stm
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