WOW... The internet really is becoming a supermarket for local shoppers, researchers and sellers alike! My question to you is, "are you a part of, what is going to be the way to buy, sell, research and even date online?"

I've just been looking over some of the latest research about online behaviour as there is a lot more research now being conducted to help businesses understand the trends of usage and the main sites that are being used (including the major search engines).

A lot of the studies come from the US, but a fair percentage of it also comes from countries like the UK, Australia and New Zealand along with some others that are the main sources for results being obtained.

How do users typically find new websites?
The Georgia Insitiute of Technology in the US which has some very dated results back in 1998, but are still quite staggering it's over 10 years later. It showed that 85% back then found informatino through search engines and over 58% used online directories. Now while that is quite out of date, a similar study done in the UK this time in the year 2000 found that 81% of users online found new websites by using search engines (a lot of them major ones) and the latter research was conducted by Forrester Research.

The Importance of Having a HIGH Ranking?
Here's some more very interesting results... A further study from the US done by NPD showed that searchers quite rarely go past page 3 of the results listed when doing a search. It was noted that over 90% of the results we recieved by the top 3 pages for any search phrase, so the top 3 pages area where you need to be if your serious about business online.

What's even more fascinating is the top 10 results (page 1) receive over 80% greater traffic to their websites than those on page 2 and 3. The thought provoking element here is, that another study done by Penn State University back in June 2003 reflected the same sort of results, but this time with the added notations that only one in five searchers actually stays on any one site more than 60 seconds (and even less on a site with other links to outside websites).

How Useful Are The Major Search Engines?
A survey was done by US based NPD Research to monitor the effectiveness of search engines in generating the results that web searchers wanted. So using a sample base of 30,000 web searchers, the results come out at 81% of people searching found the answers they wanted every single time they used a search engine.

The 77% of those who didn't find the answer to their questions in one search engine simply used another one to get the answers. Of the search phrases used 45% of them used multiple-keyword phrases (what we refer to as the "long tail" keywords), and 28% used only one word phrases, 18% used a pre-defined option, for example, a specific directory category and finally 9% of searchers typed in a question to get their answer.

So as you can see, internet marketing research is becoming wildly popular and what I got out of the above was give people what they want online, which is an answer to their problem... Just simply address a problem to a question they ask...

Don't sell... Educate... Because when you educate your market on something they specifically are looking for and you give them in depth information on it, they will stick around longer than the statistical 60 seconds that the average 4 out of 5 don't do.

I hope this has been helpful for you and you can now get stuck into your internet marketing, with a touch more knowledge and direction.

My advice to you is, whatever industry, niche or market sector you operate in, start now, the ones who start now will have a "Distinct" advantage in the coming years when we become a fully integrated, digital society... So heed the warning statistics :-)