Navigational Search

25/02/2008

Navigational Search

If you're reading the same media press we are, you'll be aware that the long tail is no longer just something dinosaurs have. It's well known that the tail of search distribution is getting longer as more people come online and search for ever more diverse and sophisticated things. The total number of search terms is going up. But the head is also becoming bigger; so why is this?

The most popular search terms are being searched for more than they ever were, and proportionally more too. According to the Hitwise blog, in the four weeks ending in the middle of October 2005, the top 5% of all search volume was made up of 49 terms. That number fell to nine in the same period of 2007.

A major reason for this consolidation is the rise of navigational search - people entering the name of a company into Google or Yahoo!, rather than typing the URL into their address bar directly. This in turn is enhanced by newer web browsers with default search engines built into their address bars. Mozilla's Firefox even encourages users to perform navigational searches and returns Google's 'I'm feeling lucky' result if they do.

The trend is huge. 'Bebo', 'eBay' and 'Myspace' are the most searched for terms in the UK, replacing 'Britney Spears' and other celebrity terms which topped the chart in '96 and before. Globally, 'iphone', 'Badoo' - a social networking site, and 'Facebook' were the fastest rising keywords in 2007, as reported by Google Zeitgeist. The top ten climbers were all brands in fact, whereas famous names like 'Shakira' were amongst those falling furthest.