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.
Related stories
New on Search Engine Land
About the author
