Number of words in a UK search query

[Blossom]

I've just seen a tweet by Hitwise which I thought people might find useful.

For the last 4 weeks in UK search:

1 word 23%
2 words 29%
3 words 21%
4 words 13%
5+ words 14%


Thoughts? I'm a little surprised that the numbers are quite similar.

 

[donreeco]

With so much made of the long tail, I'm surprised that over half of the searches use just one or two words.

 

[Edwin]

A lot of the long tail is down to Google Suggest, which helps people to enter longer queries than otherwise they might be considering.

 

[willbon]

... as people get to grips with the way a search engine works they realise the more precise the search criteria, the more likely they are to find what they want!

I would have thought that 3, 4 and 5 words would be most common!.. only 48% here.... 1 word searches would usually require another search IMHO.

 

[Edwin]

I guess that most 1 word searches are

A) branded (eg Facebook, Twitter) from people who don't use/know how to use bookmarks or who want a particular retailer (Next, Three, Tesco etc)
and
B) places (eg Cambridge, Blackpool) where people are after the map/Place page

Seen in those terms, the numbers aren't at all surprising

 

[donreeco]

It still surprises me that single word searches are more common than three word searches!?

Taking the Cambridge or Blackpool examples... just look down the top 100 results in the Google keyword tool, the exacts of all the three word terms, in total, is way higher than the exacts for just the single word and that’s ignoring all the hundreds of three word terms that will get a tiny number of searches every month.

 

[Edwin]

It still surprises me that single word searches are more common than three word searches!?

Taking the Cambridge or Blackpool examples... just look down the top 100 results in the Google keyword tool, the exacts of all the three word terms, in total, is way higher than the exacts for just the single word and that’s ignoring all the hundreds of three word terms that will get a tiny number of searches every month.

There are 151,000,000 EXACT searches for Facebook alone. That's more searches than many quite large verticals can claim for every single term, short head through long tail!

 

[wb]

Would be interesting to see the distribution of the data (i.e. how many different single word keywords actually produce that percentage).

As Edwin relates to above, it's likely that the data is skewed towards high volume search terms. As a result, although the figures will be correct, the interpretation of them won't be entirely representative.

Just one of the joys of quantitative research...

 

[JMOT]

A lot of the long tail is down to Google Suggest, which helps people to enter longer queries than otherwise they might be considering.

I can assure you longtail has existed since day 1 of the search engine online and is not down to Google suggest...

 

[JMOT]

In fact this prompted me to pull out some data from way back when I had a job

I wont reveal the source for obvious reasons but it was from the month of May.

1) dating
2) hotel
3) holiday
4) travel
5) laptop
6) job
7) computer
8) furniture
9) woman
10) photo
11) auto
12) home
13) samsung
14) bingo
15) pet
16) nokia
17) gift
18) camping
19) software
20) kitchen

Geo's like paris, london, tokyo feature way down the list.

UK geo's... like towns etc... i got bored looking for them and gave up lol