Nearly 170 million people in the United States use the Internet. 92% of Internet users worldwide use search engines to find the information they need. Search engine listings are the number one way to generate web site traffic.
Search engine Marketing Fact
Media Metrix (Nov 2003) report the percentage of searches done by US web surfers in November 2003 that were performed at a particular web site or a network of sites.
15% MSN
28% Yahoo
35% Google
16% AOL
3.1% Ask Jeeves
0.5% Lycos
1.6% Infospace
0.9% AltaVista
0.7% Others
Search engine Marketing Fact
Two-thirds of the 25 top online retailers have poor site search capabilities, meaning that potential customers may leave before they find what they are looking for.
37Signals, Feb. 2003
Search engine Marketing Fact
Online shoppers are nearly three times more likely to find what they want on the web by using search engines versus responding to advertisements
DC.internet.com, Feb. 20, 2002
Search engine Marketing Fact
41% of those who went to a web site to research a product purchase got there via search engines, which are the top referral choice.
Double Click, Dec. 2002
Search engine Marketing Fact
Search Engine Marketing is by far the most efficient online marketing tool in terms of cost per lead. Search Engine marketing cost only 29 cents as opposed to 50 cents for e-mail marketing and $2.00 for buttons and banner campaigns, not to mention the cost for offline direct marketing…
Conclusion: Search engine marketing and promotion is by far the most efficient.
Source: US Bancorp Pipar Jaffr
Search engine Marketing Fact
Users looking for products are far more likely to type the product name into a search engine’s search box (28%) than browse shopping “channels” (5%) or click on ads (4%)
Jupiter Media Metrix & NPD, March 2002
Search engine Marketing Fact
Search engines are the number one way consumers find new web sites online, used by 73.4% of those surveyed.
Forrester, March 28, 2002
Search engine Marketing Fact
Search engine positioning was the top method cited by web site marketers to drive traffic to their sites (66%), followed by email marketing (54%).
Direct Marketing Association, Aug. 2001
Search engine Marketing Fact
On the average, Americans experience “search rage” if they don’t find what they want within 12 minutes.
Web Top Search Rage Study, August 2001
Search engine Marketing Fact
Although Google and Yahoo are the dominant International search engines for United States users, this is true only in the US. Many webmasters fail to take this into account
Nielsen-Netrating september 2003.
Search engine Marketing Fact
Although the use of Meta tags has decreased in importance, they remain the most popular search engine optimization technique and are still used by 61% of those surveyed. Second in the statistics are page title optimization (44%) and link building (32%)
Iconocast, Nov. 2001