Examining the behaviour of people who use different search engines
Despite what you might think, not everybody uses Google and even though only 10% of the UK choosing to search on Yahoo and Bing it’s important that we consider who those people are and what they want to do.
A recent study into the demographic and psychographic profiles of search engine users has found that people who use Bing are early adopters and innovators whereas people who use Google are more middle of the road types.
My feeling in the past has been that people who use Bing and Yahoo just can’t figure out how to change the default search engine in Internet Explorer but this study says otherwise.
The report also looks at the journeys that people take to get to the destination:
“This research demonstrates that marketers have a real choice to make when formulating search strategies,†said Shane Atchison, CEO of ZAAZ. “The search engine acts as a kind of ‘train’ on the Internet. Each train provides a different set of unique results or ‘destinations.’ Consumer preference for a specific train demonstrates a unique demographic and psychographic profile.â€
Historically everybody used to believe that Bing/MSN users converted better than Google users, is this still true in the UK?
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3, a Leeds SEO & Digital Agency specialising in SEO, Web Design, Development & Social Media.
Comments
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Love this post patrick.
Althogh this shows that Google is now coverting better.
I still see and feel that Bing converts better.
I’m sorry, but this study is ridiculous. I refuse to believe that people who use Bing are innovators.
Hi Will, yes I thought that was strange too.
Hi Patrick,
Interesting post! I have always wondered how users of each search engine differ. A more in depth study could come up with some really interesting behavioural trends (preferably for the UK market!).
Do you know of any studies like this for the UK market?
By the way, I love the new look of the website.
Hi Christian, no I don’t know of any UK focused studies. People are probably too Google-focused to bother!
I know of hardly anyone who uses either Bing or Yahoo. I’ll stick to Google as my focus.
I read the report but it doesn’t really say how they have come to the conclusion about Bing being used by early adopters.
Could they be thinking of bing.com as a new service as it is a new domain name while they should be considering it Microsoft’s next attempt at search (i.e as a tool in MSN family)?
Please, show to us the methodology of this research or maybe one link to this. Otherwise, this is pointless.
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March 2, 2010 at 3:35pm