Longer Search Phrases Increased 10% in 2008 - according to Hitwise

[tedster]

A free report from Hitwise available as a PDF file [image.exct.net] shows that the length of search terms increased significantly over the past year.

Comparing January 2009 to 2008, searches over five words long are up 10 percent, and two word searches for example went down 5 percent. Three word searches stayed even.

Overall search data in the study shows almost 32% of all queries now use four terms and up.

[simonuk]

I saw a similar report elsewhere that closely matched those results.

I guess it depends on the area your searching. All of my sites are still 2 to 3 word searches for the top 20 phrases. I get some rare 4's but not much else.

I would guess it is the reveiw, support or driver kind of sites that get the majority of these because you have to be quite specific.

[caveman]

I see it in log files everywhere. Searchers are simply getting more sophisticated.

[shorebreak]

This new Hitwise data is at odds with the OneStat data from 2007. It’s also at odds with Hitwise data on the growth of navigational queries. Since OneStat’s been tracking this metric for 5 years to Hitwise’s 1, I’d put more faith in OneStat’s numbers, which incidentally paint the polar opposite picture of the Hitwise data.

[edited by: caveman at 10:52 pm (utc) on Mar. 6, 2009]
[edit reason] TOS #13 [/edit]