67 Percent of Searchers Use 1-3 Keywords
By Anna Johnson on October 14th, 2008Research by MarketingSherpa reveals some interesting statistics about how many keywords search engine users tend to use.
Funnily enough, you can look at the research in two ways – either as validating the benefits of long-tail search… or validating the benefits of focusing on the most popular keywords.
In terms of the former, a significant 54 percent of searches comprise three words or more. But on the flip side, 67 percent of searches are three words or less.
Here’s how the numbers add up:
- 21.04 percent of searches are one word
- 24.35 percent of searches are 2 words
- 21.61 percent of searches are 3 words
- 14.48 percent of searches are 4 words
- 8.41 percent of searches are 5 words
- 4.54 percent of searches are 6 words
- 2.40 percent of searches are 7 words
- 3.17 percent of searches are 8 or more words
And here’s what the research doesn’t tell us: how many of those searches consist of the SAME words.
Of course, we can use our own keyword research for that. Chances are, however, that a significant number of those searches of 1-3 words are the same 3 words (that’s why we target certain keywords!)… while many of those 4-8 keyword strings are likely to contain different words and variations.
And that’s why I personally find the fact that 67 percent of searchers use 1-3 keywords more telling than the fact that 54 percent use 3 or more words.
