Psychology of the Searcher – Patterns on How Searchers Formulate Queries – Blue Nile Research, April 28, 2015.

“Marketers see visitors from a wide variety of search queries coming to their site.  This data is valuable in guiding a search strategy, but it has existed in a vacuum, with little known about how searchers make decisions about how to phrase their search that lead up to the visit.  New research from Blue Nile Research surveys searchers about how they choose to form their searches in a variety of different scenarios, and helps Marketers see the patterns in how searchers formulate their queries. Blue Nile’s research shows an exact 50-50 split between users who search in fragments (e.g. ‘swollen ankle’) and those who search in more fully formed terms (e.g. ‘causes of swollen ankle during sleep’).  When it came to questions vs. statements, 27% of respondents phrased their query in the form of a question, with ‘How’ being the most commonly used prefix. With the research showing no clear clustering in how users phrase their searches, Marketers who wish to be well prepared to reach their target audience must be thorough in first understanding how their audience chooses to search before developing a strategy and by crafting content that closely maps to their pain points.”