The document summarizes key findings about consumer search behavior based on various studies and data analyses. It discusses that there are over 1 trillion annual Google searches conducted, and explores why people search and the different factors that influence search behavior, including goals, age, gender, location, and more. It also outlines the main search patterns observed, such as quitting, narrowing, expanding, and pogosticking. Mobile search behavior is discussed as well, noting how it has overtaken desktop searching and differs based on location and device.
5. Search is huge
There are more than 1 trillion annual Google searches
– 137 searches, per person
Worldometers
Search Engine Land
There are over 1
trillion annual
Google searches
11. Income, Education and Health
• Reflective of how we engage with technologies
– More money, bigger choice of technology to choose from
• Will impact the types of products we will already have as a goal
• But have no impact on search engine use or behaviour
12. Age
• Younger and middle-aged searchers are very similar
– 18 to 60s
• Older spend double the amount of time on the SERP
– On average an extra 4 seconds
Age development photo: Copyright granted, reused, unmodified (TheIRHistory)
13. Location
• Location is increasingly a huge factor for search as Google increases its
relevancy
• When a consumer adds location based search queries we have to listen to
the signal that is increasingly more important
• Yet where someone is from, isn’t going to impact their search behaviour
14.
15. Male searchers
• Tend to spend more time examining SERP
• 5.4 times more likely than females to inspect lower ranked results
• More linear
• View on average 3 more pages than females
• More time to enter queries
• Scan and filter results on SERP
16. Female searchers
• Do not scroll as much
• Less linear
• Open 2 more browser tabs for more complex searches
• Tend to repeat views of old results
• Fixate heavily on positions #2 and #3
• Prefer to read target results on paper
• Less time on SERPs
• Browse websites more deeply
20. Trust bias
• Highly ranked results are trusted
• Even if these abstracts are less relevant than other abstracts
Photo: Copyright granted, reused, unmodified
21. Quality bias
• Searcher click decision is influenced by:
– Relevance of clicked link
– Overall quality of the other abstracts in the ranking
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Google Bing Yahoo
Comparison of relevant results vs
relevant descriptions
Descriptions
Results
23. State of the art: Searcher behaviour
Query log analysis
‘Hold times’ of
documents
Number of clicked
results
Ranking of clicked
documents
Eye tracking
Evaluation of eye-
movement on a
computer screen
Areas of Interest
(AOI)
Heat maps
(don’t produce
these)
Gaze maps User studies
Mapping of gaze
data to web content
pages
Mapping of gaze
data to the results
page: ‘The Golden
Triangle’
Mapping of eye
movement to
Results and Content
pages: ‘The F-
shaped pattern’
Scanpaths
25. Scanpaths
1
2
3
45 6
7
8
9
• 16 scanpaths
• 5.8 compressed scanpaths
• 3.2 minimal scanpaths
• We don’t always view in order of
what the engine ranks
• We click on what order the engine
ranks
– Trust and quality bias
26. Enhance CTRs: Attractive keywords
Free Online Deal Affordable Price
Low Instant Local Fundamental Professional
Compare Today Find Official Shop
Great Site Qualified Save Secure
CTRs: click-through rates
28. Snippet length of descriptions
• If title, URL and description were on one line each, each would receive
equal attention
0 2 4 6 8 10
Short
Medium
Long
Navigational
URL
Description
Title
0 2 4 6 8
Short
Medium
Long
Informational
URL
Description
Title
31. Quit
• We all quit at one point but why?
– Speed?
– Information seeking process successful?
– Information seeking process unsuccessful?
Bounce Rate
Pages viewed
per session
Time spent
on page
Click depth
Cart
abandonment
38. Mobile is huge
• Mobile browsers have increased 53% vs 2013
• Mobile Apps have increased 90% vs 2013
– This has contributed to a total increase of 77% of the total increase in
time spent
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Jan-13 Jan-14 Jan-15
476,553.00
480,967.00 550,522.00
409,847.00
621,410.00 778,954.00
77,081.00 97,440.00 118,299.00
Mobile Browser
Mobile App
Desktop
http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Presentations-and-Whitepapers/2015/2015-Global-Digital-Future-in-Focus
40. Mobile search
• Our search behaviour changes on public transport
– Stronger observation on public transport
– Momentarily passes on the street
• Not an issue
• Continue walking
• Unwanted attention quickly passes
41. Mobile in social situations
• 70% of searches are conducted at home or at work
• Mobile search is a social activity
– Often conducted in the presence of others
• Device type impacts mobile search
– High-end smartphones have similar patterns to desktop searchers
42. Advanced Search
• Engines will soon process mobile queries like PPC, whereby:
– Location
– Time of day
– Day of week
– Weather conditions
– Current activity of user
– Temporal patterns (i.e. weekday vs weekend)
• Will be factored into a mobile search
43. Get a responsive website
• Mobile search has overtaken desktop on Google (SEL, May 2015)
• Justify to senior management with data analysis
Search Engine Land
Data
analysis
CRO
and UX
Be SEO
ready,
launch!
44. Geo data
• Discover your hotspots with data
– Top regions and cities
• Store targeting
– Paid search
– Organic search
*physical addresses are required