Interesting study from Arena Quantum showing that search engine users are turning to the Google Suggest tool to kickstart their queries.
Launched just 16 months ago in March 2009, Google Suggest works in either the Google homepage or from existing search results, automatically producing a drop-down menu of popular queries relating to the initial search term.
Arena found that an average of 71% of searches for its clients – including Haven Holidays, Fly Thomas Cook, Thomas Cook and Warner – began by users clicking on answer displayed from Google Suggest.
The agency says that given 3.9 billion searches were made on Google in the UK along in May 2010, almost 2.8 billion queries were influenced in this way.
The algorithm Google uses to populate the suggest tool is based on a number of factors including geographical area, volume of recent searches and personal search behaviour.
Digital performance strategist at Arena Quantum, Matt Lovell, says:
“Thanks to Google Suggest, we’re seeing a change in search behaviour with people actually searching for longer phrases and keywords.
“Interestingly, we’re finding that the suggestions users most frequently click on are those which are date or offer led as they see them as more relevant.â€
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- Stats: Google releases summer 2010 White Paper for travel
- Twitter, Google and Bing – The Perfect Storm of travel search
Interesting but the “influence” is overstated. The majority of the time one of the suggestions was what the user was going to type anyway, but found it quicker to select the correct option from the list.
@Danny- you took the words out of my mouth! This feels like a bit of statistical interpretation… possibly bordering on statistical manipulation, really. Most people probably found what they were already going to type.
Good observation Danny and Graham. While this is the case for some queries, what we have actually seen is that for certain terms, particularly those focused around conversion where offers or seasonality come in to play, this isn’t the case at all. Instead we are seeing as much as 70-80% of these clicks are coming on terms well down the list that otherwise wouldn’t have been typed in.
We’ve also noticed a significant increase in the length of terms entered (with search queries containing 5 or more keywords increasing as much as 30% over the past few months). As a result, while Google may not be influencing the full 71% of searches, the Suggests functionality certainly seems to be having a significant effect in changing the Search landscape for our clients and our tools are allowing them to update their PPC and SEO strategies accordingly.
If you check out the full press release on our website there’s some additional information….
http://www.arena-media.co.uk/news
Still, looking at my own experience, i would say that on many occasions what i was in the process of writing is one of the options way down the list, the other thing is that by selecting one of the options that most closely relates to what you’re searching for (even if it is several keywords long) is because users assume that it’s a regularly searched term and therefore expect to get more results this way. So yes there is an element of suggestion working, however, i think it’s grossly exaggerated if not taking into account a better understanding of user behaviour
What you’re saying is completely true Danny, but the effect this functionality is completely reshaping the search market for users and clients alike. Based on this research, our clients have been able to make some fundamental changes to their Search activity in order to drive additional traffic and ultimately incremental revenue by observing user behaviour and learning from this.
Unfortunately the above article has been slimmed down and so doesn’t really provide the fuller details about the tools we’ve built to harness this behaviour for our clients and help them proactively target emerging keywords. If you check out our website this should give you more information.