Useful search stats

If you were wondering which search engines had users with money in the bank....of course you are .... in the month of June, MSN searchers were 48% more likely to buy online than the average Internet user. Googlites were 42% more likely.
The likelihood of AOL users to make an online purchase was nearly nonexistent, reporting a 3 percent better chance than the average user. Yahoo users were 31% more likely and AskJeeves users were 17% more likely.

Men were most likely to search using Google. Google's audience in June was found to be 51.5% male. Yahoo! was 49.7% male, MSN 49%, AOL 48.1%, and AskJeeves was only 46.3% male.

The percentage differences aren't that great, but when you talk about 48.5% of Google users being female vs. 52% at AOL, that's a pretty big difference when you are talking about the entire Internet population.

Googlites seemed to launch more sophisticated searches as well, more often typing in complex search queries. The simpler, more broad search terms occurred more often with AOL, MSN, and Yahoo!.

An important point though is, likelihood to buy doesn't mean that customers buy right away. Another study showed that in the consumer electronics category (cameras, TVs, etc.), 85% of purchases were made off line an average of 5 to 12 weeks after the initial search. Only 15% made a purchase during the first search session.
Overall, in the same category, 25% of searches converted to a purchase, but 92% of these purchases occurred off line.

These findings reinforce the importance of considering the latent impact of search engine usage when evaluating search engine marketing investments.

Search cannot be thought of as solely a direct response marketing tool, especially in highly considered product categories where search activity can precede a purchase by as much as 60 to 90 days. As for search terms, 70% of all searches began with generic search terms (camera, mobile phone), while branded search terms (Sony, Lexmark) accounted for only 20%. The remaining 10% of search terms were product specific (HP notebook nx9010). Sixty-one percent of purchase conversions were begun with generic search terms.

It's critical that retailers consider generic search terms as an important part of their keyword strategy.
Marketers focused solely on specific product terms known to convert directly will fail to address the vast majority of consumers in the buy cycle.

 

Interesting Stats. I found however google converts quicker. I think MSN is listed as converting more in sales because it has MSN shops and such so the users are more targetted as shoppers.

 

But then MSN provides less traffic, so G is still tops when you figure in traffic AND conversion rate. (Although my best converting traffic comes from direct links from related pages.)

 

Interesting stats, where was this article from?

 

I'd also like to see the original source of those stats

 

People who are lame enough to use MSN
to search are probably more gullable

I have a grudge because MSN seems to hate
me, I have to admit. Our site has products
that only we sell, and have been #1 in
Google for 4 years and are still around #200
in MSN. What kind of quality search results
can they give with that record?

 

Is it just me, or does it seem weird that these stats show that almost everyone who uses any search engine is "more likely to buy than the average user"? Who is this (mythical?) "average" user who never seems to use any reasonably well-known search engine?

There are lies, damned lies and statistics. But even worse are misrepresented statistics - and I can't help but feel that the way this piece was written is not giving the whole picture because of that.