According to a blog post at comScore, the rate at which search queries are growing is not as favorable as the rate of paid clicks; 68% versus an 18% increase. Why is this? There are a couple of reasons, but one major factor is that people are searching smarter with longer syntactic strings. I rarely do a search with one word. Most of my searches are a string of words that help me target what I’m looking for so that I don’t have to wade through a mountain of results that just aren’t relevant. I think another big reason is that people, me included, are just bypassing the sponsored search links and even may go as far as skipping the first three entries knowing that those are probably there because they paid to be listed there. Regardless, the number of quieries continues to grow at a faster clip than the number of people who click on paid search results because people are changing the way they search. But just when you think you’ve got it all figured out as a master searcher, the bright minds at Yahoo and Google will figure out a way to make money and make people who search happy. And if they don’t, you can bet someone at some other company will be waiting in the wings to do just that.
Enzo F. Cesario
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