Google User Stats | Recipe for Success

Good morning this is part 3 of user statistics and demographics for the top 4 engines. Excluding AOL as it is powered with Google results. Day 1: MSN / Live; Day 2: Yahoo; Day 3: Ask.com; Day 4: Google (You are here). Tomorrow recap and summary.

Everyone knows Google owns the biggest market share of searches, coming in in July 2007 at 52.7% of all Internet searches. That's 3,906,877 searches in one month! I am still going to supply the user stats I have collected for Google, as they are useful in marketing your web site within its niche. However, if you are going to be successful, you have to be thinking about a design that will work for Google....There is just too much traffic there.

Google is the 2cnd top parent company in the United States, just below Microsoft. I have to say as far a search goes they are a known authority and leader in the industry. Googler's are more loyal than any only searchers and spend on average over 12 minutes on the site per visit. I do think this in not necessarily an accuarate stat, as it probably does not utilize the "active" window protocol, and many will leave it open in case they do not find what they seek on the site they choose.

51.5% of Google users are male and I was not able to locate the breakdown of users ages. I would suspect it is fairly even spread, as it is so commonly used. If any one age is more dense then I would guess it would be users in their 30's. Google users are 42% more likely to buy, giving you another big reason to consider Google's guidelines. 59% of users possess a college education, and earn averagely 77,000 USD. Google's users are tried and true Internet users with averagely 4+ years of Internet experience and 54% get online everyday. Google is where you will find your best "long tail" action, as Google searchers tend to use more complex queries more often.

In my estimation you need Google in your organic referrals to be successful. Not being indexed in Google would be like a radio show only running on HD radio. The good news is that Google is very up front about their quality guidelines. There are very specific metrics that Google uses to rank and index sites. I have made a list below of some pointers, but if you need more detail see my post about getting indexed.

1. Rich, unique, textual content


2. Update regularly..Blogs do well


3. Relevance of title tag, description tag, and Domain name


4. In bound links, especially authority and topic/theme relevant links


5. Do not link to "bad neighborhoods" or spam sites


6. Do not reciprocal link or purchase links


7. Use a Google sitemap


8. Make a robots.txt and include your sitemap


9. Avoid canonical and regular duplicate content issues


10. Use long tail keyword phrases in your content


11. Plan a smaller niche for your "big pond" area

One additional note to consider if Google's vertical search. Its not as easy to use as Ask.com's, but way more powerful and 100 fold larger. So consider some vertical opportunities in your plan, video is a great one.

I hope you have enjoyed the statistics in this series and will stop back tomorrow for the recap and some new research that I have completed. I think you will find my research tomorrow very eye opening! As always, if you have something to add, please let me know. If the post needs to be edited, I'll do that, and credit you too!

Peace and SEO,

Melanie Prough
"Baby"


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