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Internet Statistics

Canada and U.S. Internet Statistics

Search engines are extremely popular

• The search-using population totals 90 percent of all American Internet users, a close second to the e-mail-using population of 91 percent of all Internet users. (Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project and comScore )
• 55% more Americans used search daily in 2005 compared to the previous year (Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project and comScore )
• 5 billion online searches were conducted across approximately 60 search engines in the U.S. in Dec. 2005 compared to 3.3 billion in Dec. 2004 – a 55 % year-over-year increase ( Blog article )
• 75% of Canadians are online.
• A majority (52 per cent) of Canadian internet users have made purchases online
• Approximately 85 percent of the Canadian Internet population conducted at least one search at the top engines each month, compared to 73 percent of the U.S. population.

Search engine marketing is in demand

• 2005 Search Marketing spending in the U.S. and Canada is up 44% from the year prior according to SEMPO. According to a Jan. 9 2006 report, U.S. and Canadian advertisers spent $5.75 billion on search engine marketing last year.
• More than 80% of all Internet users find new web sites through search engines (Source: Georgia Tech/GVU Users Survey). That means that about 650 million people use search engines to find web sites.

Best type of Online Marketing that is surfacing is Organic, not Pay-Per-Click

• Studies show that people are less likely to click on paid search ads rather than on results from organic search engine optimization. One study found that search users are up to 6 times more likely to click on the first few organic results than they are to choose any of the paid results [1]
• An eye tracking study[2] showed that 50 percent of users begin their search by scanning the top organic results.
• Other studies have shown that only 30 percent of search engine users click on paid listings, leaving an overwhelming 70 percent who are clicking the organic listings.[3]
• A 2003 study found that 85 percent of searchers report clicking on paid links in less than 40 percent of all of their searches, and 78 percent of all respondents claim that they found the information they we searching for through sponsored links just 40 percent of the time.[4]
• Trust: Studies are beginning to indicate that the trust level for organic results is much higher than that of paid results, and that paid results are looked upon as a nuisance by some searchers.
• One study found that only 14 percent of searchers trust paid listings, and 29 percent report being "annoyed" by them.[5]
• Another study found that 66 percent of customers distrust paid ads.[6]
• Pay-Per-Click Costs Rising
• Long Term Results vs temporary Pay-Per-Click
  While a pay-per-click campaign may produce results more quickly than an organic search engine optimization campaign, organic search engine optimization campaigns can give you results that last. When the budget runs out for a pay-per-click campaign, or when your company decides that the pay-per-click campaign should be terminated, the results end as well.

Placing in first three pages of search engine results crucial

• The first 10 results for any search enjoy click-thru rates of 65% (source: Berrier & Associates
• 85% of web users will look for your product or service in a search engine and will only look at the first 10-30 listings ( 1 to 3 pages ) and ignore the rest. Using a search engine placement service to prepare your web site and submit to the search engines is a foundational part of online marketing and cannot be ignored.

The big three search engines account for most traffic and should be targeted almost exclusively

• The big-three search engines: Google, Yahoo! and MSN performed 81.1% of all searches in December 2005, up slightly from 78.8% in December 2004. ( article )
• Google accounts for a 43.7% share of local American search traffic and Yahoo - 28.2% and MSN / Microsoft - 13.7%. (Source: comScore Media Metrix, 2005)

Other Canadian and American Internet Stats

• Canadian online sales recorded their fourth consecutive year of strong double-digit growth in 2005 at 38.4 percent. ( full article )
• 1 in 3 Canadians use a dial-up modem ( 67% use high speed internet). Ensure that your web pages load fast and does not use too much graphics. A 20k file takes 3.6 seconds to download over a 56k modem. Save one of your web pages to your computer to view the entire page byte size including all graphics to see if it will take more time than this. If it loads too slow 33% of users may not use your web site.
• 20% of users use a screen resolution of 800 x 600 or less. It is important that your web site is not only designed for wide screen resolutions. Try changing your monitor display settings to 800 x 600 and view your current web site to see if it looks good.
• Internet Explorer web browser now has less than 88% of the market share. Ensure that your web site works on most Internet browsers, including Mozilla Suite ( Netscape ) and Firefox.
• According to recent statistics, 812 million people used the Internet in 2004 (Source: Nielsen/NetRatings).
• Web users spend twice as much time online as watching TV (Source: Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society).
• Consumers spent US$199 billion online in 2004 (Source: ComScore).
• A survey conducted by market research firm TNS revealed that 75% of all online shoppers said that company size was not a factor in having their online shopping needs satisfied. Only 15% said they preferred to shop with large retailers (Source: TNS).

Household Internet use at home by Internet activity

References