One might ask "why should I be focusing my efforts marketing to the search engines if they refer so little traffic?" In fact, the StatMarket press release goes on to imply exactly that. However, to shift your marketing budget without taking a closer look at the data would be a serious mistake.

First, and most importantly, you must look at the source of the data for the study. StatMarket derives their statistics from their hit counter service (HitBox). Unfortunately, their hit counter is more often installed on the home page rather than on all pages. Therefore, the service is going to logically count far more referrals that tend to go to home pages rather than sub pages of a Web site. Search engines drive traffic to any page of a Web site that is indexed. It is very common to have dozens of internal pages ranked very high in several search engines - but few people put hit counters on their internal pages. That's why the StatMarket study shows such a disproportionate number of referrals from "direct navigation" or bookmarks (47.01%). When someone types in a URL directly, it's almost always the home page right?

When you do a search on a search engine, consider how often you enter a site through a page other than the home page. Even when you enter through a page that looks like the home page, it's often a search engine optimized page designed to look like a home page. Based on information I've evaluated about how hit counters are used on the average Web site, a large portion of the "global search engine referrals" are not being accounted for in the StatMarket study.

Still have your doubts? Simply look at any number of other studies out there on where traffic comes from. For example, here's a recent Forrester Research study that determined that 81% of consumers find Web sites using search engines. It's more scientific study showed that "Links from another site" came in a distant second at just 59%. Most of the other studies I've read similarly peg search engines at or near the top.

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How Internet Consumers Find Web Sites:
Search engines: 81%
Link from another site: 59%
Viral marketing (word of mouth): 56%
TV: 48%
Guessed URL: 41%
Online advertising: 20%
Radio: 19%
Direct mail: 10%
* Source: Jun. 2000 Forrester Research Inc.
"UK Internet User Monitor"
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Despite the obvious flaws to the StatMarket study, I decided to dig deeper by consulting Fredrick Marckini, the CEO of the well-respected search engine positioning firm, iProspect.com. iProspect.com has a subscription to StatMarket so he agreed to do some queries against their data and found some surprising results.

Although StatMarket reports 6.86% as their "global average," search engine referrals to "Bed and Breakfast" sites were 37.54%. Book/magazine sites raked in 35.98%. Because of the issue with the home pages, the exact percentages are really unknown. However, you could still logically infer that the role of search engine referrals varies depending on any number of variables including your market, target audience, and industry segment. The question is are you capitalizing on that source of traffic or are you letting it fall to your competitors?

StatMarket claims 47% arrive at a site from a bookmark or by surfers who type the URL directly into the browser. That number is probably high. However, regardless of how many people navigate to a site via a bookmark, they must still FIND your site in the first place. The most common way to do that is by performing a search at one of the many major search engines. Once the person finds your Web site, if you've done your work by creating an intelligible and attractive Web site, they'll bookmark your site and you'll earn a customer for life.

The key for any savvy Web marketer is to get in as early as you can and grab the attention of all of those new people who venture onto the Internet each day looking for places to shop. You know intuitively that most will turn to the search engines or directories to find what they're looking for. When they do, make sure you're employing the best technology (i.e., WebPosition) to ensure your site ranks near the top of those searches. If you've not already picked up a copy, what are you waiting for? The longer you wait, the more people are going to find your competitors and bookmark their Web sites.

Larry Edwards interviewed Fredrick Marckini, CEO of iProspect.com in a recent issue San Diego "T Sector" magazine. A tidbit from the interview that might be of interest: Last year StatMarket reported only 3 to 5 percent of referrals coming from search engines. Therefore, comparing StatMarket's own statistics, search engine referrals have almost doubled in the last year! This demonstrates that search engine positioning is, in fact, GROWING in importance!

For more information on iProspect.com's search engine positioning services see:

http://www.iprospect.com

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