Report: Daily search engine usage increasing

07/08/2008

A growing proportion of the internet population now use search engines daily, according to new statistics released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Some 49 per cent of web users conduct an internet search everyday, compared with one-third who did so six years ago, the report revealed.

Younger internet users with some higher education, a salary of at least $50,000 (£25,656) a year and several years of experience of the web are most likely to use search engines regularly, Pew said.

Online search is more popular as an internet activity than checking the news and looking for weather data, the gap between search use and email use - currently the most popular web-based task - is narrowing.

Some of the factors behind the increasing use of search could encompass the increasing usefulness of search engines, a greater number of websites incorporating their own search facility and the spread of broadband, Pew noted.

This intensifying focus on search may also be seen in the online marketing sector, with a recent MarketingSherpa report suggesting that spending on search-based campaigns such as search optimisation has risen by almost a third this year.