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The search engine industry is in such a state of flux right now that it can be hard to base marketing decisions on anything solid. Revolution has brought together some statistics in one place to give a clearer picture of the marketplace as it currently stands, but do bear in mind that launches, acquisitions and broken partnerships are the name of the game at the moment (see Battle of the search engines, p48). However, it is clear that the market is growing as marketers increasingly realise the importance of driving traffic to their sites through search engines, whether through advertising or optimisation.

How much is spent on sponsored search?

According to Jupiter Research, in 2002 spend on sponsored search in Europe was 140 million euros (£99 million), up 40 per cent on 2001. In 2003 it is set to be 208 million euros (£147m), up 48 per cent on 2002. Jupiter's predictions are 284 million euros (£201m) for 2004, up 37 per cent on 2003, and 363 million euros (£257m) for 2005, up 28 per cent on 2004.

In the UK, the IAB values the paid-for search market at £25.4m. Here, 31 per cent of all online advertisement investment in the first half of 2002 was in performance-based search listings (second after banner-style embedded formats, which account for 41 per cent, or £33.5m). In April 2003 Jupiter found that 82 per cent of marketers in large companies and 61 per cent of those from smaller companies were poised to increase their spend on search marketing.

What is the average spend per clickthrough?

According to Jupiter, average US clickthrough spend is 27 cents, which it predicts to rise to 35 cents in 2008, due to the take-up of search-engine marketing by bigger advertisers.

How many clicks do search results achieve?

According to the IAB, the top five listings in a search engine take 25 per cent of all clicks. Across its own network, espotting found the first position gains 40.6 per cent of clicks, then 19.4 per cent for position two, about 13 per cent for position three, 7.9 per cent for position four, and five per cent for position five.

What are people using search engines for?

According to the IAB, more than 75 per cent of internet users rely on search engines to get around the web. Some 74 per cent search for goods and services on the internet, and 70 per cent of e-commerce transactions originate from search. According to internet statistics company StatMarket, some 13 per cent of people arriving at a web page got there via a search engine, a figure up from 7.18 per cent last year. The other options are direct navigation, that's to say typing the address into the browser bar (around 65.5 per cent) and using web links (around 21 per cent). In the UK, the number of referrals made by search engines is above the global average, standing at 15.07 per cent.

How many searches are made per month?

UK internet users make between 400 million and 475 million searches per month, according to the IAB.

What are the most searched for words?

The most searched for terms do tend to vary with the current zeitgeist.

Google says that the most searched for words in the UK in 2002 were (in order): BBC, Big Brother, easyJet, Ryanair, Britney Spears, Gareth Gates, weather, Kylie Minogue, World Cup and Holly Valance. In August of this year they were: easyJet, Argos, cheap flights, Christina Aguilera, Angelina Jolie, Ryanair, Justin Timberlake, Eminem, Orlando Bloom and Blu Cantrell.

What are the biggest search engines?

According to Nielsen//NetRatings (which only looks at home internet usage in these figures) the biggest search destination in Europe is MSN, which had 42.88 million unique users during August this year. Google follows with 36.86 million users, then Yahoo! with 22.99 million. Lycos Europe is fourth with 12.67 million and then T-Online with 12.55 million users.

In the UK the top three are the same: MSN (10.39 million), Google (7.31 million users) and Yahoo! (6.16 million), but the next two are Freeserve (4.48 million) and Ask Jeeves (2.96 million).

Which search engines make the most referrals to e-commerce sites?

According to web analytics firm WebSideStory, whose figures reflect the percentage of global internet users arriving at a web page via a specific search engine, in December last year Google topped the board at sending users to e-commerce sites, with 27.16 per cent, followed by Yahoo! with 25.92 per cent and MSN with 24.11 per cent. This was a change from the year before, when Yahoo! was the leader by a long way (41.41 per cent) with Google at 18.46 per cent and MSN at 15.41 per cent.

Shopping search engines seem to be the next big thing, as Yahoo!, Google and Amazon all move in this direction. Will people use them?

According to online survey firm ForeSee Results, which questioned more than 1,100 US consumers online, over 50 per cent of users said shopping search engines helped them save time and money (see graph below). The most popular reason was that it let them compare prices quickly (73 per cent), while 54 per cent said it let them compare products, 45 per cent used them to find the stores that sold the products they were looking for, and 28 per cent said that using a shopping search engine lowered the risk of making a bad purchase.