UK Search Engine Click-Throughs Revealed
Travel, communities and research websites receive the most click-throughs from search engines whilst research, travel destinations and government sites rely most on search for visitors, according to new research from Nielsen//NetRatings.
NetRatings said that in July 2007, Britons clicked on over 1.3 billion search results – equating to over 29,000 every single minute.
The multi-category travel sector (containing brands such as Lastminute.com, Expedia and Thomson) received the most of these click-throughs, 41.6 million = 4.7% of all click-throughs.
| Sectors receiving the most click-throughs from UK searches: July 2007 | ||||
| Rank | Sector | Millions of UK click-throughs to sector | % of all UK click-throughs | Leading brand in sector (illustration only) |
| 1 | Multi-category Travel | 41.6 | 4.70% | Lastminute.com |
| 2 | Member Communities | 40.2 | 4.50% | MySpace |
| 3 | Research Tools | 39.3 | 4.40% | Wikipedia |
| 4 | Search | 37.4 | 4.20% | |
| 5 | Mass Merchandiser | 33.9 | 3.80% | Amazon |
| 6 | Government | 32.4 | 3.60% | Directgov |
| 7 | Adult | 31.5 | 3.50% | FriendFinder Network |
| 8 | Videos/Movies | 27.8 | 3.10% | YouTube |
| 9 | Current Events & Global News | 27.2 | 3.10% | BBC News |
| 10 | Online Games | 27 | 3.00% | Miniclip |
| Eg In July 2007 there were 41.6 million click-throughs to a multi-category travel site = 4.7% of all click-throughs | ||||
| Source: Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Search UK, home & work data, July 2007 | ||||
Alex Burmaster, European internet analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings, said: “Britons online are most likely to be searching for travel deals, social networks or reference information through sites like Wikipedia and Yahoo! Answers.
“To see how deeply ingrained search is in the internet today, one needs to look no further than the fact the fourth most popular search destination is search itself. In other words, people use search engines to find other search engines!”
Research sites (such as Wikipedia and Yahoo! Answers) have the greatest percentage of visitors coming from search (79%) followed by travel destinations (such as About Britain and Visit Scotland) with 68%, says NetRating.
| Sectors with the greatest % of Unique Visitors coming from search: July 2007 | |||||
| Rank | Sector | Unique Searchers (millions) | Unique Audience (millions) | Searchers as a % of Audience | Leading brand in sector (illustration only) |
| 1 | Research Tools | 8.9 | 11.3 | 79% | Wikipedia |
| 2 | Travel Destinations | 4 | 5.9 | 68% | About Britain |
| 3 | Government | 8.8 | 13.2 | 67% | Directgov |
| 4 | Directories/Local Guides | 7.3 | 11.1 | 66% | Yell.com |
| 5 | Hotels/Hotel Directories | 5 | 7.7 | 65% | Booking.com |
| 6 | Shopping Directories & Guides | 6.7 | 10.4 | 65% | Shopping.com |
| 7 | Multi-category Automotive | 0.4 | 0.6 | 62% | WeBuyAnyCar.com |
| 8 | Multi-category Travel | 7.3 | 11.8 | 62% | Lastminute.com |
| 9 | Gifts & Flowers | 0.7 | 1.1 | 62% | Interflora |
| 10 | Computer & Consumer Electronics News | 3.7 | 6.1 | 62% | CNET |
| Eg In July 2007 8.9 million Unique UK Searchers clicked-through to a research site. Overall, research sites have a UK Unique Audience of 11.3 million, therefore, search visitors as a % of all visitors is 79% | |||||
| Source: Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Search UK, home & work data, July 2007 | |||||
Burmaster added: “Reference and information sites have the greatest percentage of visitors coming from search – whether it’s people looking for information on a place to visit, a local service, a hotel or something to buy. Research tools, dominated by Wikipedia, receive around four in every five visitors due to search – not surprising, when you consider how often Wikipedia shows up in the first page of Google results.
“Wikipedia itself says that as it has many links and contains lots of content on a wide range of topics, their pages tend to rank well in search engines and to get a high PageRank on Google. Hence, large numbers of searchers clicking through to Wikipedia across a very wide range of search subjects.”
A recent report from E-consultancy forecast that spending on search engine marketing in the UK will grow 58% this year to £2.2 billion, with almost £2 billion of that coming from paid search.
Meanwhile, a study from iProspect revealed that 67% of the online search population is driven to search by offline channels.
Nielsen//NetRatings: www.nielsen-netratings.com