A recent study shows that despite many trying to predict its downfall in recent years, search engines, and particularly Google, remain the dominant force in people’s everyday life. Even with millennials, where many said social media would take over, search engines continue to be the driver, with social cues helping to back up purchasing decisions along the way. This article goes into depth on a new study showing that search is by far the leader in online tools when people consider what to use for potential purchase decisions. Though asking a friend or family member may always come first, once that option is off the table, search becomes the go to option.

97% of People Make At Least One Search A Day

The study showed that 97% of people conduct at least one search per day and millennials, the group deemed most at risk of moving elsewhere, showed to have 62% search at least five times a day. Perhaps key pieces of this are consistency, ease, and immediacy.

Google SearchConsistency

Though nothing seems to last long these days, search in some form has been around since the beginning of the internet and Google has been the leader for quite some time. People know what they are getting with a search engine and for the most part, search has been improving the same general concept since the beginning. Social media is often changing and the youth jump from one source to another as soon as parents adopt the previous one, so it can be exhausting for business owners to keep chasing them around or figuring out where their customers jumped off to when they know they are still searching.

Immediacy

Search engines are figuring out what people really want from their searches via historical usage data, etc. to get you to what you want even faster, so there is less need to go to page 2 or make a follow-up search to get what you want. With everyone, including millennials, wanting things right away, there is no substitute for this.  With search engines often now even including social backup to certain brand searches, the search engine can even be the source for some of that social support many thought millennials would flee to social for. They still go to social in many occasions, but it is almost always coupled with the search engine. We don’t want to wait for our friends to chime in when the search engine can tell us now.

Ease

You want an answer to a question or to find a local service provider, you just type it in or even just say it and it is there. As I have recently been traveling, I can vouch for the growth of the “near me” searches in recent years as most conduct searches on their phones when they are out and about.  Searches like “best Thai restaurant near me” will give you a list of restaurants with a 4-star or higher average review score (social verification) within a certain distance of you that are classified as Thai or have Thai in the business information or social additions like questions or review text.  Having all of this info in one spot is extremely helpful for searchers of allages, and this is why it continues to be the dominant force.

Though social media and other digital marketing venues can offer success in their own ways, as you develop a presence, there is no substitute on the ease and reliability of the search engine that we have all grown dependent on. What better way to bring in business than to make sure yours shows up when 97% of the public is searching every single day. Give us a call today and get found.