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.

Related Topics: Stats: Search Behavior

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz