Is there anyplace that I can find statistics for how many Google searches there overall, over time? Or anyplace where I can find total internet traffic statistics? In other words I want to compare how my traffic has grown with the general search engine and internet growth.
I'm not sure there are statistics available for that. I guess the closest you could get would be to look at the overture terms and see how many searches are currently being performed, then maybe look at some Alexa data. It's really not going to be comprehensive though. Your best bet would be to do the Overture searches once a month in order to build up a bit of history about how frequently the term is searched for. If you find something, I'd love to hear about it, I'm just not sure whether stats as detailed as that are going to be available.
I have been maybe too skeptical of Overture, do you know that they update their terms on a regular basis? Also, our customers, being engineers, are 99x more likely to use Google. BTW, I used to hang out at Bourne End in Bucks, do you know where that is?
I read this artical sometime ago, may be interesting... http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3357771
Hey, I live in Bourne End... What a small world. There are a few members from the forum who actually live near the area I think.