Gentlemen: Start Your Engines!
Search engines have become an increasingly important part of the online experience of American Internet users. The most recent findings from Pew Internet & American Life tracking surveys and consumer behavior trends from the obscure Media Matrix consumer panel show that about 60 million American adults are using search engines on a typical day.
This means that the use of search engines is edging up on email as a primary Internet activity on any given day. The Pew Internet Project shows that on a typical day, email use is still the top Internet activity. On any given day, about 52% of American Internet users are sending and receiving email, up from 45% in June of 2004.
Recent surveys by PEW show that the use of search engines on a typical day has risen from 30% to 41% of the internet-using population, which itself has grown in the past year. The number of those using search engines on an average day is up to 59 million.
These findings have considerable consequences for the way people gather and use information online and the way e-commerce is conducted.
“Most people think of the internet as a vast library and they increasingly depend on search engines to help them find everything from information about the people who interest them, to transactions they want to conduct, organizations they need to deal with, and interesting factoids that help them settle bar bets and backyard arguments,” said Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet Project.
“The evolution of search engines as everyday consumer Web tools has made them a vital resource for marketers,” said James Lamberti, vice president of comScore Networks. “Search engines are obviously a critical vehicle in reaching consumers during the buy cycle, but they also offer a rich source for consumer profiling, segmentation, and measurement of product demand. To-date, we have only witnessed the preliminary impact of search engines on e-commerce.”
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