14 of 100 Most Popular Search Terms Include “.com” in Search
Hitwise released the top ten search terms in ten different categories for the month of May, and of the 100 most popular search terms, 14 of them actually had “.com” included within the search.
Search engine usage is so hardwired into Internet users’ brains that instead of just putting “myspace.com” in to the URL bar, they plug it into the search bar in their browsers, run it through the search engines, and then click through there.
It makes little sense since people have to be smart enough to know that if they just input the .com URL into their browser, it will take them directly to the site in one less step. It just proves how search has become the catch-all for the Internet.
There is a big difference between simply putting in the name of a product or site and adding the .com to the end of it. Searches for “pepsi” and “pepsi.com” yield far different results. The Pepsi search is dominated almost entirely by sites operated by Pepsico, while putting in “pepsi.com” gives far different terms, some of them with news about the site, and others quite random. In fact, the eighth Google result for the search “pepsi.com” gives me some random blog talking about colon cleanses, among other things, while the eighth search for “pepsi” gives information about a Pepsi bottling group.
Given Internet users propensity for searching using URLs, it makes sense to be sure a site’s own full URL is secured with relevant results in the search engines. The lack of brand security has also led to a good deal of fraud and phishing scams, with fake sites being set up that send users searching for a specific site in the wrong direction. A recent article by Sue Ainley in Adotas explains this phenomenon quite well.
To drive the point home, 4 of the 100 searches listed by Hitwise also included “www.” in addition to the .com at the end of the search. Most people already know they don’t ever need to put “www.” into their browser to get a site to load anymore, but are actually still putting it into search engines. Maybe people just aren’t very bright.
Story via The ClickZ Network
Technorati Tags: hitwise, popular search terms, brand security
