6 ms·

16% of the queries on Google each day are brand new (never seen before)

145 points by kunle 15y ago

Hitchhiker 15y ago
Very interesting. This one is one level up on the tree: http://www.google.com/ads/answers/ http://www.google.com/ads/answers/
- eridius 15y ago
  I'm amused at the juxtaposition of these two: >Five stars beat four stars every time. > When you’re hungry, the best sandwich is usually the closest one.
fakeer 15y ago
another proof human is actually creative :-)
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
meric 15y ago
Interesting facts, but here's one I didn't understand: "By 2012, there will be 2.3 billion mobile devices in use, the equivalent of 70% of the world’s population." What does that mean? Something bad will happen between now and beginning of January? Virus infecting drones (mobile devices), to terminate 3.5 billion people, so that 2.3 billion = 0.7 * world population in 2012, for example?
- amerine 15y ago
  I assume they mean 70% of the mobile phone market.
  - mseebach 15y ago
    Doesn't sound right. Mobile devices accounts for 70% of mobile phone market?
- kolinko 15y ago
  actually, the current world population estimate is 7 billion, not 6.
  - meric 15y ago
    I just did http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=world+population&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=... and took the first number from the top... Looking back it was actually the number from 2009.
- joelhaasnoot 15y ago
  That statistic is weird however you might want to interpret it because it in no way accounts for people having multiple phones, which is in no way rare.
  - wanorris 15y ago
    I'm sure it's not rare as in unheard of, but to have any significant impact on the number of people carrying 2.3 billion devices, there would need to be hundreds of millions of people with multiple phones. I have no idea of the statistics, but I wouldn't think it would be anywhere near that common.
- gojomo 15y ago
  If you click-scroll to the factoid to that stat's left, they seem to be comparing mobile with desktops. So they may mean, "70% of the world's population of internet users/devices", which is plausible.
toumhi 15y ago
I would think search queries are getting less diverse now, especially with google suggest giving you autocompletion - I find it very often gives much better results to look at the top domain queries (e.g "online marketing strategies", "online marketing tips", "online marketing best practices" for marketing), look at the results, have a feel for what the right wording is, and then refine your queries. I find that much easier to do than randomly type the first sentence that comes to mind.
latch 15y ago
I actually don't believe that...or, at least, I don't believe it means what I think I'm supposed to believe it means. If they do 3 billion queries per day[1], that's almost 500 million new queries every day. You gotta figure most misspellings and typos are repeats.. [1] http://www.quora.com/How-many-search-queries-does-Google-serve-worldwide-every-day http://www.quora.com/How-many-search-queries-does-Google-ser...
- bjoernbu 15y ago
  I assume the 16% are supposedf to mean 16% for distinct queries. The well-known queries and common typos are entered a lot more frequently - so a huge portion of those 16% may actually just be bored people googling for "fist-on-keyboard"
  - wisty 15y ago
    If that's the case, it's a very misleading statistic. If you have 1 million each of "facebook", "fcaebook", "facebok", "faceook", and "fakebook", and one "asdweniviwnxoemmgmejvj v fef", it's kind of spin to say "we’ve never seen 16% of the queries we see every day."
- timroman 15y ago
  Think about all the searches that are related to current events. Assuming most of these events have never happened, that's a lot of new, unique searches.
  - anamax 15y ago
    > Assuming most of these events have never happened, that's a lot of new, unique searches. How about some examples of these "most" events that haven't happened before? Sure, Clooney hasn't gone on vacation with Kiebler before but ....
- eavc 15y ago
  I can believe it easily. There are many millions of potential values for each element in the search and an unlimited number of elements per search. And the order matters (presumably). Keep in mind that there are hundreds of thousands of relatively common words in English alone. At least as many relatively uncommon ones (including stuff like HackerNews). Then there are dozens of popular languages with probably hundreds of thousands of words each, millions of unique misspellings of words in every language, and numbers from a variety of common uses (dates, serial numbers, math problems, etc.). People also search for character strings from computer code and the like when they are troubleshooting. And it's not that hard to see instances where the average person would be tapping into all of that variety in a real-life search. "map of 'address' in 'city'" "concerts in 'city' on 'date'" "'arbitrarily long song lyric, movie quote, book quote -- including errors'" "'math problem from school or life'" "'product name' vs 'product name'" "'athlete' 'performance metric' since 'date'" "serial number 'part description'" "'person name' 'town name'" "'phone number'"
pastr 15y ago
Thanks for defining brand new.
ra 15y ago
A few years ago I heard Sergey say it was 20% ... so I guess the number is gently trending down. Would be cool to see the curve for this.
mmaunder 15y ago
Thought this stat from the "Search improves the bottom line" was a little lame: 89% of the traffic generated by search ads is not replaced by organic clicks when ads are paused.* Google Search Ads Pause Studies, July 2011 *For those who have been running paid search campaigns. My parsing of this interprets it as: "89% of advertisers aren't dumb enough to compete with their own organic SEO traffic by placing paid ads sponsoring the same keywords."
- robryan 15y ago
  Depends, in some cases, for stuff that converts really well, it's not such a bad idea. Improves your chances of getting a click. I think stuff like bidding on your precise company name is probably a waste in a lot of cases where the person is already searching for you and you have little/ no real competition on the term.
- josefresco 15y ago
  It's all about CAC and many times showing up in both places returns an excllent conversion rate. AdWorda users who blindly bid on any keyword without this type of tracking are dumb, not advertisers who bid for already well performing organic terms.
- hammock 15y ago
  What if the competition is there above your organic results?
- xekul 15y ago
  I have organic listings ranked in the top 1-3 spots for my niche and I'm still buying Adwords for the same keywords, because PPC really does drive different traffic compared to organic. A few months ago Google suspended my account (apparently by mistake) and I noticed a significant drop-off in traffic. When my account was reinstated, I was happy to be paying for traffic again.
  - itswindy 15y ago
    1-3 spots means that you are #4-#7 in reality once the top ads are counted. Many visitors prob don't even know they're ads so they click on the ads on top.
electromagnetic 15y ago
> By 2012, there will be 2.3 billion mobile devices in use, the equivalent of 70% of the world’s population. Given that the world population is estimated to hit 7 billion next spring, I think this number is a bit absurdly off. 70% of 7 billion is 4.9 billion. I think google should use google next time they need to find out the world population, because they're estimating it at 3.3 billion.
- onemoreact 15y ago
  By population I think they are limiting it to 'people who use the internet and could use google'.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
slouch 15y ago
Is this new? Am I just finding this after John Andrews' post a few days ago as a coincidence? http://www.johnon.com/764/seo-myths.html http://www.johnon.com/764/seo-myths.html
RyanMcGreal 15y ago
I'm interested to know whether the novel query rate is changing over time. If it's increasing, that might be an indicator that google users are trying to refine their search terms in response to the creeping SEOization of the search results they're getting.
- wanderful 15y ago
  "Creeping SEOization" could also be stated as keyword space filling up—a natural effect of the web growing—so queries are getting more specific. Another possible factor is that users are becoming more savvy search users, or even trusting that they will get meaningful results for novel queries (e.g. Vietnamese Restaurants in Saskatoon).

145 points by kunle 15y ago

Very interesting. This one is one level up on the tree: http://www.google.com/ads/answers/ http://www.google.com/ads/answers/

eridius 15y ago
I'm amused at the juxtaposition of these two: >Five stars beat four stars every time. > When you’re hungry, the best sandwich is usually the closest one.

fakeer 15y ago

another proof human is actually creative :-)

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

meric 15y ago

Interesting facts, but here's one I didn't understand: "By 2012, there will be 2.3 billion mobile devices in use, the equivalent of 70% of the world’s population." What does that mean? Something bad will happen between now and beginning of January? Virus infecting drones (mobile devices), to terminate 3.5 billion people, so that 2.3 billion = 0.7 * world population in 2012, for example?

amerine 15y ago
I assume they mean 70% of the mobile phone market.
- mseebach 15y ago
  Doesn't sound right. Mobile devices accounts for 70% of mobile phone market?
kolinko 15y ago
actually, the current world population estimate is 7 billion, not 6.
- meric 15y ago
  I just did http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=world+population&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=... and took the first number from the top... Looking back it was actually the number from 2009.
joelhaasnoot 15y ago
That statistic is weird however you might want to interpret it because it in no way accounts for people having multiple phones, which is in no way rare.
- wanorris 15y ago
  I'm sure it's not rare as in unheard of, but to have any significant impact on the number of people carrying 2.3 billion devices, there would need to be hundreds of millions of people with multiple phones. I have no idea of the statistics, but I wouldn't think it would be anywhere near that common.
gojomo 15y ago
If you click-scroll to the factoid to that stat's left, they seem to be comparing mobile with desktops. So they may mean, "70% of the world's population of internet users/devices", which is plausible.

toumhi 15y ago

I would think search queries are getting less diverse now, especially with google suggest giving you autocompletion - I find it very often gives much better results to look at the top domain queries (e.g "online marketing strategies", "online marketing tips", "online marketing best practices" for marketing), look at the results, have a feel for what the right wording is, and then refine your queries. I find that much easier to do than randomly type the first sentence that comes to mind.

latch 15y ago

I actually don't believe that...or, at least, I don't believe it means what I think I'm supposed to believe it means. If they do 3 billion queries per day[1], that's almost 500 million new queries every day. You gotta figure most misspellings and typos are repeats.. [1] http://www.quora.com/How-many-search-queries-does-Google-serve-worldwide-every-day http://www.quora.com/How-many-search-queries-does-Google-ser...

bjoernbu 15y ago
I assume the 16% are supposedf to mean 16% for distinct queries. The well-known queries and common typos are entered a lot more frequently - so a huge portion of those 16% may actually just be bored people googling for "fist-on-keyboard"
- wisty 15y ago
  If that's the case, it's a very misleading statistic. If you have 1 million each of "facebook", "fcaebook", "facebok", "faceook", and "fakebook", and one "asdweniviwnxoemmgmejvj v fef", it's kind of spin to say "we’ve never seen 16% of the queries we see every day."
timroman 15y ago
Think about all the searches that are related to current events. Assuming most of these events have never happened, that's a lot of new, unique searches.
- anamax 15y ago
  > Assuming most of these events have never happened, that's a lot of new, unique searches. How about some examples of these "most" events that haven't happened before? Sure, Clooney hasn't gone on vacation with Kiebler before but ....
eavc 15y ago
I can believe it easily. There are many millions of potential values for each element in the search and an unlimited number of elements per search. And the order matters (presumably). Keep in mind that there are hundreds of thousands of relatively common words in English alone. At least as many relatively uncommon ones (including stuff like HackerNews). Then there are dozens of popular languages with probably hundreds of thousands of words each, millions of unique misspellings of words in every language, and numbers from a variety of common uses (dates, serial numbers, math problems, etc.). People also search for character strings from computer code and the like when they are troubleshooting. And it's not that hard to see instances where the average person would be tapping into all of that variety in a real-life search. "map of 'address' in 'city'" "concerts in 'city' on 'date'" "'arbitrarily long song lyric, movie quote, book quote -- including errors'" "'math problem from school or life'" "'product name' vs 'product name'" "'athlete' 'performance metric' since 'date'" "serial number 'part description'" "'person name' 'town name'" "'phone number'"

pastr 15y ago

Thanks for defining brand new.

ra 15y ago

A few years ago I heard Sergey say it was 20% ... so I guess the number is gently trending down. Would be cool to see the curve for this.

mmaunder 15y ago

Thought this stat from the "Search improves the bottom line" was a little lame: 89% of the traffic generated by search ads is not replaced by organic clicks when ads are paused.* Google Search Ads Pause Studies, July 2011 *For those who have been running paid search campaigns. My parsing of this interprets it as: "89% of advertisers aren't dumb enough to compete with their own organic SEO traffic by placing paid ads sponsoring the same keywords."

robryan 15y ago
Depends, in some cases, for stuff that converts really well, it's not such a bad idea. Improves your chances of getting a click. I think stuff like bidding on your precise company name is probably a waste in a lot of cases where the person is already searching for you and you have little/ no real competition on the term.
josefresco 15y ago
It's all about CAC and many times showing up in both places returns an excllent conversion rate. AdWorda users who blindly bid on any keyword without this type of tracking are dumb, not advertisers who bid for already well performing organic terms.
hammock 15y ago
What if the competition is there above your organic results?
xekul 15y ago
I have organic listings ranked in the top 1-3 spots for my niche and I'm still buying Adwords for the same keywords, because PPC really does drive different traffic compared to organic. A few months ago Google suspended my account (apparently by mistake) and I noticed a significant drop-off in traffic. When my account was reinstated, I was happy to be paying for traffic again.
- itswindy 15y ago
  1-3 spots means that you are #4-#7 in reality once the top ads are counted. Many visitors prob don't even know they're ads so they click on the ads on top.

electromagnetic 15y ago

> By 2012, there will be 2.3 billion mobile devices in use, the equivalent of 70% of the world’s population. Given that the world population is estimated to hit 7 billion next spring, I think this number is a bit absurdly off. 70% of 7 billion is 4.9 billion. I think google should use google next time they need to find out the world population, because they're estimating it at 3.3 billion.

onemoreact 15y ago
By population I think they are limiting it to 'people who use the internet and could use google'.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

slouch 15y ago

Is this new? Am I just finding this after John Andrews' post a few days ago as a coincidence? http://www.johnon.com/764/seo-myths.html http://www.johnon.com/764/seo-myths.html

RyanMcGreal 15y ago

I'm interested to know whether the novel query rate is changing over time. If it's increasing, that might be an indicator that google users are trying to refine their search terms in response to the creeping SEOization of the search results they're getting.

wanderful 15y ago
"Creeping SEOization" could also be stated as keyword space filling up—a natural effect of the web growing—so queries are getting more specific. Another possible factor is that users are becoming more savvy search users, or even trusting that they will get meaningful results for novel queries (e.g. Vietnamese Restaurants in Saskatoon).