The Google Blog runs an interesting series called This Week in Search. It’s worth subscribing to, because it gives you some interesting insight into search trends.
Recently they did a summary of the search traffic for 2009. Here are a few interesting results. Did you know that:
* 1 in 13 search results pages displayed a map. If Google thinks you are looking for local goods or services, then Google will try to display maps results like the ones below. Not all products or services categories get a “lucky 7 pack” maps result, however.
* People are willing to drive 11km further to a local business on the weekends vs weekdays.
* More than 1/3 of Google queries last year were never seen before; they were brand new queries. This is a great reason to continue creating lots of good “long tail” content for your site – people are constantly searching for new terms and phrases, and are using longer and longer search queries.
70% of Google users make more than one query per day.
Here is a link the full This Week In Search post.
If you enjoyed this article, get email updates (it's free).
See my disclosure about advertising and affiliate links
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
“More than 1/3 of Google queries last year were never seen before; they were brand new queries. This is a great reason to continue creating lots of good “long tail” content for your site – people are constantly searching for new terms and phrases, and are using longer and longer search queries.”
Pretty amazing stat…
Every local business needs to realize they are a Media Company. (as Brian Clark at Copyblogger recently stated)
A static site without ongoing fresh content is not going to capture this long tail, yet most small businesses who DO have sites make a weak commitment to creating ongoing content.
Guess they need a SmallBiz WordPress Theme… and actually mix in a blog post from time to time, huh?
Great post; very interesting! It always amazes me to see the statistics on search results and search marketing. This was a great read, thanks!
” More than 1/3 of Google queries last year were never seen before”
That was certainly an eye opener
Searches in Google keeps on evolving. It’s hard to keep up.