How Do Customers Use Search Engines To Research Product Purchases Online?

According to this 2010 Compete Online Shopper Intelligence study 61% of consumers use search engines to research product purchases. Though there are differences in search engine usage depending upon the type of product researched. For apparel search engines account for only 12%, while an email from the retailer is top at 38%.

According to the 2004 survey by Enquiro 63.9% of b2b customers would use search engines to find out more about a product or service over other places to begin a search such as a known manufacturer of the product (18.9%).

And for respondents who were searching for products or services over $50,000 in value, 60% of them would use search engines. 82.9% of respondents would use Google first over other search engines.

TopRank's 2008 survey of journalists and reporters found that 91% of them use search engines to do their job, and 64% of them use social networks.

A 2010 George Washington and Cision survey found 89% of journalists use blogs and 65% use social networks to do their job.