Forum Moderators: DixonJones
I would like to know if there are any stats or studies on how users search. I am a webmaster but whenever talking to a marketing person here he always insists on using Phrase Search, I.e. putting search terms in quotes eg. "aaaaa bbbbbb".
When doing research to optimise websites I always use general search and not Phrase search, broad match, exact match etc.
It would help if I could back up my argument if I had some official information to back me up!
Steve
So - as of Las Vegas last year, here are some stats that I had from the UK:
More people are likely to use one word on MSN than any other engine (about 50% of seaches)
Most people now type in two or three words on Google, qulaifiying their search, but they generally let Google decide how the words relate together.
People using "inverted commas" are considered power users by Google and frankly are less than 1 percent of searches. You can check your stats and you should be able to see when people have used the "inverted commas"... You may have to look quite hard though...
I wasn't sure if my stats showed the search terms in quotes or not and have not tested for it. I use Google Analytics so I will check there. From your answer I understand the Phrase Searches wouldn't default to searches without the quotes in the stats?
Steve
