Search isn’t about buying stuff

The search game of ad dollars One of the bastions of the search slash advertising has been this idea that people just have to have advertising displayed to them based on what they are searching for. One of the biggest proponents of this ideal has been Robert Scoble who will often use the example of searching for photographs, cameras or even hotels and expecting that the advertising on a site; if available, should be geared to showing results that tie in with the search. This is because there is this supposition that because people are searching then they want to buy something.

Today Dare Obasanjo has a post where he points to a year old post by Bill Slawski on Search Engine Land. In the post Bill; talking about a 2007 study, shows that the majority of search isn’t related to buying stuff

Their research uncovered the following numbers: “80% of Web queries are informational in nature, with about 10% each being navigational and transactional.” The research points to the vast majority of searches being conducted for information gathering purposes. One of the indications of “information” queries that they looked for were searches which include terms such as: “ways to,” “how to,” “what is.”

So one has to wonder just how much of this idea that everyone is using search because they want to buy something is purely a marketing campaign. A campaign being directed in a large part by Google in order to convince advertisers that they can’t survive in an online world without Google and their search results.

I know myself I have never used any search engine in order to find something I wanted to purchase. The other thing that a study like this shows is that CPM ad models are flawed and why ads like Google AdSense only benefit Google and a very small percentage of the high traffic sites.

Conversation Tags: search, Google, AdSense, advertising

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KimberlyBock 2 months ago 1 point
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It's used in order to persuade people that they NEED to be online buyers as opposed to being an offline buyer. If you haven't noticed yet, most "A-list" / top marketers are busy in forums that do not seem to care that they are marketing to marketers. It's a strategy used to create buzz for them/their companies/their products/their services. If they present themselves as know-it-all God's of search/marketing, then they have gained the attention of a large degree of people who they only see as potential 'conversions'..

A smile and a curtsey brings them tons of traffic, tons of page views, and tons of suckers.

Those who are sincerely looking out for our welfare are few. the others? They are in your pocket. haha..but its inevitable that the age of computer sales is upon us, because they will have their way in convincing us that they are needed.

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HelloKit 2 months ago 2 points
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Well, we usually don't watch TV or listen to the radio because we want to buy something, either. The point of advertising isn't that they think you already want to buy something, it's to *make* you want to buy something. They're more likely to succeed with that if they're selling something related to your interests... and it stands to reason that if you're searching for it, you're probably interested in it.

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J. Phil 2 months ago 1 point
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I have to disagree with search not being useful for shopping.

Two points: 1) I almost always comparison-shop for expensive items (and not just tech items) using froogle or shopper.com or pricegrabber.com. 2) I do a lot of product searches at newegg.com and amazon.com, using their built-in search engines, but still could be considered a search.

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J. Phil 2 months ago 1 point
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Woah. All my short URLS got turned into FQDNs.

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TDavid 2 months ago 1 point
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Not saying the following statement is untrue, but it seems a bit far-fetched:

"I know myself I have never used any search engine in order to find something I wanted to purchase. "

Never? *Never*? How much shopping do you do online? You *never* have heard about a product or service from somewhere other than the internet and used a search engine to find out where to buy it?

We do a considerable amount of shopping online and while that 10% figure seems high even to our household, it's a long way from "never."

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StevenHodson 2 months ago 1 point
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Sorry TDavid but I can honestly say that I haven't searched for where to find a product I want to buy. *If* I am buying something from the web it is because it is something I have already on my radar which means I know where to find the product. I will say I have used search for navigation purposes but not for buying stuff.

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