Search Engine Statistics Needed

In need of generic stats about search engine usage

[Yinzer]

I need to find some statistics regarding search engine usage to include in a presentation to management. Basic stuff that supports the importance of search engine optimization. Stuff like: "X percent of a site's traffic is driven by search engines" and "Visitors will only look at the top X results..." and "Search engines get X-gazillion queries a day..."

I'm perfectly comfortable making "X" on my own - that is until somebody asks "And what is your source?"

Can anybody point me towards some quality sources? All help is greatly appreciated. Thanks much,

Yinzer

[jeremy goodrich]

One's own log files generally work very well, usually after run through a statistics package like Webtrends, Hitbox, or similar.

[claus]

This is not intended to offend, but do a search on the strings "search engine stats" and "search engine usage" and a few good general sources will come up. A couple of them even have "searchengine" as part of their URL.

But, as with all research - good info is not easy to get. Especially not for free :)

Plus: Some (well, actually most) of the companies publishing info have obvious commercial interests often combined with little experience in research methodology, so I wouldn't always trust what I read.

You requested generic stats; jeremy says that You should look at Your own logfiles in stead, and I must admit, that even though this is not always an easy or fast method, it will give You more relevant results than most of the stats You can get for free - or even paid surveys.

Why? Simply because stats taken from Your own site is the single best source for evaluating how Your own site performs.

Example: In Your log files, look for Referrer stings like this one:

http://www.google.com/search?as_q=SEARCHTERM&num=10&start=30

There will be all kinds of other characters in the string, but these are the important ones. It will tell You four things:

1) The visitor came from the google search results page.

2) He/She found Your site when searching for "SEARCHTERM"

3) He/She saw 10 results per page (num=10)

4) Your site was on page three (start=30)

Google provides very good service to the research community in this way - not all engines do that. But if You parse Your own weblogs on a regular basis and interpret the results correctly, You will find that You have a large amount of knowledge present already. It just waits to be explored.

/claus

[jjansen]

I have just published some research concerning this - see the press release [psu.edu...]

I can send you the research paper if you want.

Also, there are several papers on my Web site concerning search engine usage:
[ist.psu.edu...]

Jim Jansen

[2_much]

posted in this thread:
[webmasterworld.com...]

[edited by: 2_much at 8:15 pm (utc) on June 30, 2003]

[digitalghost]

<edit>Posted here: [webmasterworld.com...] </edit>