Interesting Research from Chitika
Thursday, July 29th, 2010The ad network Chitika seems to take the business of serving ads very seriously. Not only that but they share some of their research information. In looking over the Chitika site I noticed a sidebar link for Research. One of the articles caught my eye.
They recently looked at search term length from a couple of different points of view. They looked at the number of search terms used in searches and the number of terms used in searches that resulted in a click through. Their ad network keys off of search terms for many of the ads displayed, so their information is strong and relevant.
To determine the optimal word count, Chitika looked at a sample of 41,103,403 impressions of search traffic coming into their network between June 13th and 19th. Within the sample, 10,710,579 impressions – some 26% of all search traffic – came from three-word searches. The next top word counts were two-word (19%), four-word (17%), and finally one-word (14%). Any query beyond five words will see dramatically lower traffic, throwing into perspective just how fragmented traffic from long queries really is.
Three word domain names are often recommended by IM pros. This data supports the value of the three word domain name, as an exact match of the domain name can often achieve a number one SERP. Their further research supports the value of the long tail in Internet Marketing:
Additionally, Chitika looked at the advertising click rate by word count to see how visitors’ intent was reflected by how many words they searched for. The highest ad click rates were for queries of 5, 6 and 4 words. The implication is that a more complex search is more likely to convert into revenue for a publisher, up to a point.
The long tail terms are shown to convert better. This gives some additional insight into your SEO efforts.
To read the full article and see the graphs that they include with the report see the article: SEO Sweet Spot – Three-Word Searches