Hitwise recently organized a seminar on their extensive UK market research. Hitwise analyzed the top five search engines for 1500 top searched terms in the last 12 weeks of 2008.

Some Figures
Every UK website receives 4 out of a total 10 visits from a search engine. The largest market share in the UK is garnered by Google.co.uk and Google.com. They command a whopping 86.8% market share whereas the rest of the search engines like Yahoo, Live Search and Ask have garnered the rest of the 8.3%.

Long Tail
It has been observed that Google.uk has a long tail with people searching for specifics. On the other hand, ASK UK has a longer tail. This also implies that Ask has a larger number of specific niche queries with a volume that is higher than that of Google itself too.

The average length of search terms is the largest in Ask UK, whereas Google has the shortest. 90% of all terms that are used are specific to a brand. This can also be because Hitwise has measured the top 1500 terms that have dominated searches in the UK. Most of the top searches are for Branded terms only.

Popular Niches
Television and Gaming are the two most popular subjects that are being searched online in the UK. There is a very interesting conclusion that has come from this survey. It says that Television has influenced searcher behavior.

A lot of searches also took place in the niches of Dating, Finance, Health etc. In all of these niches, the searches took place more outside Google.

Search Sources
As we understand the data a bit more, we will be able to understand how the traffic search engines are sending data to different industries and how there are some industries that are completely dependent on search engines for their traffic whereas others aren’t.

Shopping and Classifieds receives the highest amount of traffic, followed by Computers and Internet and lastly Business Finance and Travel.

Thus we have some facts to conclude.

• Every typical website receives 2 out of 5 searches from Search Engine.
• People usually search for a brand rather than a product.
• 10% of the top 1500 terms used for searching are generic terms.
• Google has the highest market share.
• Live Search has the highest market share in technical queries, Ask has the longest tail and Yahoo is strong in niche areas like Travel, Retail and Finance.
• Paid search rates vary according to industry and search niche. But it has been observed that transaction driven industries like travel, finance etc. pay the highest rates of paid searches.

Tags: Long Tail, Popular Niches, Search Sources, Some Figures

This entry was posted on Monday, March 30th, 2009 at 12:14 am and is filed under Internet Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.