Bogus Vertical Search Percentages
June 2, 2007
Is it me or are people routinely making up numbers on search verticals and categories? Over the last few months, I’ve heard search vertical percentages thrown around like money by drunken sailors at a Vegas whorehouse. I’ve never seen a source, neither has anyone who seems to quote these:
- Spock.com, the “secretive” people search engine claims that 30% of searches on the web are people-related. This is the basis of their entire freaking business model. Sure, but what the hell does that 30% mean? Almost no one out of that 30% is searching for Saumil Mehta (I wish I had a stalker; I’ve wanted one for a long time but no one seems to oblige). 20% of those searches are for some combination of “Lindsay Lohan”, “Britney Spears” and “Sanjaya”. In other words, head terms, for which a Wikipedia page written by a freckled 17 year old will probably suffice. If it doesn’t suffice – well, that’s a sign that the reader has bigger problems than a poor flipping search experience.
- While I can’t personally afford to attend the swanky All Things D show, a colleague of mine made it down to San Diego to hear Jason Calacanis brag about how 24% of all searches are for the top 10000 terms. This is the basis behind Mahalo, a Hawaiian word that Bloat! so hilariously derides as translating to “Bandwagoneer”. While the product IMHO is a redundant version of Wikipedia + Google, the number sounds like it came from where the sun don’t shine (don’t quote me on it though)
- Lesser luminaries have quoted me other BS search percentages: 15-30% navigational queries, 20% local queries and 68% pornographic ones (okay, I made that last one up).
Does anyone know what the real numbers are? Do they even exist, or are we all just making shit up as we go along?
