Examining the behaviour of people who use different search engines

Despite what you might think, not everybody uses Google and even though only 10% of the UK choosing to search on Yahoo and Bing it’s important that we consider who those people are and what they want to do.

A recent study into the demographic and psychographic profiles of search engine users has found that people who use Bing are early adopters and innovators whereas people who use Google are more middle of the road types.

My feeling in the past has been that people who use Bing and Yahoo just can’t figure out how to change the default search engine in Internet Explorer but this study says otherwise.

The report also looks at the journeys that people take to get to the destination:

“This research demonstrates that marketers have a real choice to make when formulating search strategies,” said Shane Atchison, CEO of ZAAZ. “The search engine acts as a kind of ‘train’ on the Internet. Each train provides a different set of unique results or ‘destinations.’ Consumer preference for a specific train demonstrates a unique demographic and psychographic profile.”

Historically everybody used to believe that Bing/MSN users converted better than Google users, is this still true in the UK?

BY Patrick Altoft AT 5:05pm ON Wednesday, 17 February 2010

Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3 and has worked in the SEO industry for over 10 years. With experience across some of the worlds largest brands as well as startup businesses Patrick is well known in the industry and speaks regularly at the major SEO conferences and events. Follow Patrick on Twitter or Google+