People Are Finding More Words To Search With

Brian Ussery, an Atlanta SEOer and blogger, reported last week that Google searchers have broken the three-word search term barrier as of the fourth quarter of 2007. The average query is now four words.

That means a lot to SEOers targeting that long tail of search. It also means (maybe) that, collectively, searchers are becoming a bit more sophisticated in their searching, or at least more specific.

Ussery says he and colleagues learned the news from Google’s Avinash Kaushik at a social gathering at Google Atlanta. Kaushik "beta tested" a presentation he’d put together during the flight over.

The story’s so boring it has to be true.

Hey, mind if I beta test a reading of Deuteronomy? Oh, wait, that’s what Leviticus was, wasn’t it?

I keed, I keed. Just sayin’ I don’t think he’s name-dropping.

Ussery also learned that 14% of Google clicks were from paid search, and 25% of user queries were unique queries. 

Hat tip to Search Engine Roundtable