Our Changing Online Behavior
A new Yahoo! white paper shines light on search shift
Patterns in online behavior are tending to shift away from traditional search, though user behavior shows a notable opportunity in searches for highly specific items, or “structured objects”—things that include restaurants, products, cars, real-estate listings, cities, bands, sports teams, celebrities, sports players, and companies—according to a new white paper released last week by Yahoo! Labs scientists Ravi Kumar and Andrew Tomkins. The paper was released at the WWW 2010 conference in Raleigh, N.C.
Kumar and Tomkins analyzed data from the Yahoo! Toolbar, including about 50 million pageviews in March 2009. They found that users spent 21.4% of their time online time performing searches of one kind or another. These included main Web searches (6.2%), multimedia searches (1.4%), and searches for items such as those on eBay or Amazon.com (1.4%). In addition, search’s 9% of pageviews was responsible for 8.9% of direct referrals and 3.5% of indirect referrals.
The paper found that 20% of checkout pageviews were reached through search activity. But Kumar and Tompkins also noted that users spent about half their time browsing and one-third communicating.
“The future of search,” say the paper’s authors, “will include increasing focus on gathering, understanding and, when appropriate, serving structured information.”
The strong lead in structured object searching, as well as the increase in browsing and communicating, should give both search and display advertisers a clue as to where things are headed—and perhaps where to put their dollars.
Full disclosure: This paper is complex, and not for the faint of heart. The bold among you can read the full version here.
For a list of all the papers presented at the WWW 2010 conference, click here.
For another take, see James Temple’s article in the San Francisco Chronicle, and stayed tuned for more Yahoo! white papers to be released soon.
(Image by shuttermonkey via Flickr, CC 2.0)
— Michael Mattis
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[ 6 comments | Categories: Industry Trends, Insights, Research, Search, Yahoo! News ]
Yes that fine right.I want know look new online chat
[...] Click over to the Yahoo! Advertising blog for more enlightenment. [...]
[...] at Yahoo! surmise that in the future, search needs to focus on gathering and understanding, and when appropriate, [...]
Interesting but I don’t see how this is changing search. Just because more search volume is geared towards informational things and communicating doesn’t take away from the pre existing searches from traditional search. It just adds to it.
[...] One interesting point to note for those that have e-commerce websites: The paper found that 20% of checkout pageviews were reached through search activity. But Kumar and Tompkins also noted that users spent about half their time browsing and one-third communicating.(source) [...]
I believe what is being said, is that individuals may be changing their search techniques and the time allotted using a search engine to find something. With that in mind, website owners need to transition with that in order to obtain a steady increase in results.