Did You Know? Google Gives Data on Search Query Length
by Frank Reed on May 27th, 2010
As with anything related to business it is important, maybe even mission critical, to stay on top of trends. Whether there are new seasonal releases of products or new ways of doing business, business professionals need to stay abreast of these shifts or else there can be the possibility of falling behind and losing business.
Search marketing is no different with regard to staying on top of what is happening. In fact, the changes occur so frequently that it may be even more important. There are sources out there that track these trends like Hitwise and Compete but it’s even better when data can be seen as coming directly from the horse’s mouth. The best horse, in the case of search, is Google.
Brad Geddes shares some of this data with us that was given to him directly by Google (I also have to give a hat tip to Matt McGee for pointing me in Brad’s direction). The trend being addressed is about the number of words used in search queries.
Why is this important to the local SMB retailer / dealer of big brand merchandise? Well, it’s simple. The longer the search query, the easier it is for the smaller player to be competitive in search (organic and paid) due to the decrease in competition for the phrase coupled with the theory that the more developed the key phrase, the further into the buying cycle the searcher is. Here is a chart that Brad shared with his readers
What’s interesting about the fact that nearly 55% of the searches conducted are for phrases of 3 words or more. This kind of trending data can help you maximize your paid search budgets by going after these phrases with your often limited budget. One and two word searches have much more competition and tend to cost more. Even if the costs for these phrases are the same, the volume for the longer terms is lower thus the keeping spend down. Lastly, if the theory holds that the longer the phrase the closer to conversion (it’s not perfect but nothing is) the searcher is, then this is a true win / win for paid search advertisers.
Search marketing is about data. Yes, it can be taxing at times to stay on top of things but what if the other result of doing this kind of trend monitoring created another thing you needed to track: increased sales? Pretty good trade-off, wouldn’t you agree?