Study after study over the past years have consistently found that search engines are one of the most popular ways that people find web sites. Despite this, some new studies have also provided the apparently conflicting view that only a small percentage of a web site's traffic comes from search engines.

For example, a recently released study by Booz-Allen & Hamilton found that a healthy 33 percent of Internet user sessions involve searching at search engines and portals. Given this, one might assume that web sites on the receiving end of all this searching ought to get somewhere near 33 percent of their traffic from search engines. Instead, the study found that web sites get a scant 6 percent of their traffic from search engines and portals.

Similarly, a study released by StatMarket last December found that only about 7 percent of web sites get traffic from search engines. Many in the search engine optimization industry were dubious about this seemingly-low number, when it appeared. The people at StatMarket can now feel some vindication, given that the Booz-Allen study backs up their finding.

The high usage of search engines found by past surveys and the low traffic generated by search engines highlighted in the recent surveys are not in conflict. This "search gap," as I'm calling it, comes naturally out of the fact that once someone has found a web site that satisfies a particular desire, they will probably go directly to it in the future, rather than navigate to it via a search engine.

For example, let's say you want to buy a particular book. You do a search at your favorite search engine and find a page from Amazon about the book. You visit the Amazon site, like the price and information you are shown, so purchase the book from them. Thanks to search engines, Amazon has gained a customer.

A month later, you need another book. Remembering your positive experience at Amazon, you go directly to the web site rather than using a search engine to find it. Thus, your second visit isn't credited to search engines. However, it would have never occurred if you hadn't found Amazon via search engines the first time AND had a favorable impression of the site.

So, once people find trusted sites, they return to them directly for particular needs - thus accounting for the relatively low traffic the StatMarket and Booz-Allen studies say is generated by search engines. However, because our needs are wide-ranging, we are constantly searching for new things - which accounts for the overall high usage of search engines that other studies find.

It would be a mistake to interpret the search gap as meaning that search engines are not important. They remain a top way users will locate web sites initially and so cannot be ignored. Instead, the real lesson of the search gap is the age-old adage that first impressions count. Make a good impression when people first come to your site via search engines, and they may come back directly to you in the future.

Courtesy of Search Engine Watch