Study: 80-Percent Of Searches Are Informational, 20% Are Navigational Or Transactional
A Penn State research study showed that about 80-percent of searches are informational in nature, whereas 10-percent are navigational and another 10-percent are transactional. The researchers reviewed over 1.5 million queries from hundreds of thousands of search engines users to prove the “80/20 rule that 80 percent of the cases can be achieved with these […]
Barry Schwartz on April 10, 2008 at 10:37 am | Reading time: 1 minute
A Penn State research study showed that about 80-percent of searches are informational in nature, whereas 10-percent are navigational and another 10-percent are transactional.
The researchers reviewed over 1.5 million queries from hundreds of thousands of search engines users to prove the “80/20 rule that 80 percent of the cases can be achieved with these clear-cut methods,” said IST assistant professor Jim Jansen.
Jansen said his study is 74-percent accurate and hopes to improve the accuracy rate to a 90-percent yield.
How does he define each type of search?
- Informational searching involves looking for a specific fact or topic
- Navigational searching seeks to locate a specific web site
- Transactional searching looks for information related to buying a particular product or service
For the complete paper, go here.
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Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.
In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.
Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.
In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.
Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.