Study: 49% of Users Utilize Search Daily

In terms of daily activities, search trails only email, which is accesses by 60 percent of users, based on Pew's survey of 2,251 adults on their Web habits this past April and May

These days, the only thing people do more frequently on the Internet than search is check their email.

That's how much of a core behavior using search engines has become for the typical Web user, 49 percent of whom use search every day, according to a new report issued by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. In terms of daily activities, search trails only email, which is accesses by 60 percent of users, based on Pew's survey of 2,251 adults on their Web habits this past April and May.

That's a major surge in usage from 2002, when Google was still in the process of becoming a household word and just a third of users searched every day, found Pew researchers. The percentage of at-least-once-a-day searchers soared by 69 percent over the past six years. During the same period, the percentage of users checking email every day climbed just 8 points, from 52 percent to 60 percent.

Though search and email are far and away the leaders in daily Web activities, Pew found that significant numbers of Web users (39 percent) visit news sites and weather sites (30 percent) regularly. Interestingly, despite the huge numbers of users joining the social networking wave, just 13 percent of users log onto those sites every day, found Pew.

Pew's report identified three core reasons for search's prominence in average users' lives: accessibility, speed and relevance. Said the report: "users can now expect to find a high-performing, site-specific search engine on just about every content-rich Web site that is worth its salt. With a growing mass of Web content from blogs, news sites, image and video archives, personal Web sites and more, Internet users have an option to turn not only to the major search engines, but also to search engines on individual sites, as vehicles to reach the information they are looking for."
 
Plus, with an estimated 55 percent of Americans using a broadband connection to access the Web, those folks are simply more inclined to search often--and more often they not, they get what they are looking for. "It may be that general search engine sites have become so useful and well tuned that people turn to them for an increasingly broad range of questions."

www.mediaweek.com | Mike Shields | 2008-08-06