Brief Overview of Searches and Key Phrase Length

Every person who is using the search engines has a particular goal in mind. And that is to find a relevant answer. If, for example, you are trying to find an information about tigers, then you will type "tigers" into the search query. As a result from the search you will see in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) a list of websites that are containing significant volume of information about tigers, their life in the wildness, the different types of tigers, etc..

But, if you have a problem with the electric power in your house, you live in Manchester and you search for: "electrician", then you might not find the answer you were searching for. Instead of that, you could type "electrician in Manchester", "electrician services Manchester", or, "how to fix my electricity power" for which you will see a list of websites offering answers relevant to your problem.

ComScore data from March 2009 shows an average query length of 2.9 words. A more detailed look shows the following percentages of search per word length. See data shown below:

• 25,32% of searches - 1 keyword
• 24,96% of searches - 2 keywords
• 19,80% of searches - 3 keywords
• 13,17% of searches - 4 keywords
• 7,53% of searches - 5 keywords
• 4,04% of searches - 6 keywords
• 2,15% of searches - 7 keywords
• 1,19% of searches - 8 keywords

Searchers Behavior and Household Income

According to ComScore, the number of search queries performed on the Web was 12,6 billion across all engines in December 2008.

They stated that Internet usage increases with household income. See the data for January 2009 shown below:

• $15,000 to $24,999 - 5,792 serchers
• $25,000 to $39,999 - 16,108 searchers
• $40,000 to $59,999 - 39,716 searchers
• $60.000 to $74,999 - 20,947 searchers
• $75,000 to $99,000 - 28,995 searchers
• $100,000 or more - 44,627 searchers

Additional data from studies, surveys and papers on Search Engine Land's Stats & Behavior page (click the link).