Not sure why, but it seems that I’m running across a number of statistics this morning that I’m finding interesting, so I thought I would share. The first bit of information is coming from Search Engine Land and discusses the results of a recent iProspect study that describes user behavior and search results. The most interesting stats were:

• 68% of search engine users typically click results on the first page of search results
• Only 8% of search engine users review more than the first three pages prior to clicking on a result
• 49% of search engine users who continue their search when not finding what they are looking for change and/or re-launch their search after reviewing just the first page of search results (this number is up from 40% in 2006).

If anything, these stats showed me how important being on the first page of a search result really is – but the third stat also shows that searchers are becoming savvier when it comes to search queries and are more likely to change a search if the results don’t look right. To me, this shows me that searchers will incorporate longer, more specific search queries, which is good news for people who try to profit off of the “long-tail,” as long as you’re on the first page of the search results.

The next set of data is auto insurance related and comes from the folks at comScore. In a recent press release, comScore released data that shows that search-referred auto insurance quotes increases by 36% in 2007.

The release goes on to explain some interesting specifics about quote requests based on search type. The findings show:

• Branded organic search traffic yielded 11% conversion to a quote request
• Branded paid search traffic yielded 19% conversion to a quote request
• Generic organic search traffic yielded 22% conversion to a quote request
• Generic paid search traffic yielded 33% conversion to a quote request

I find these numbers interesting for a couple reasons. First, I always thought that branded search traffic would yield higher conversions since the search is specific to a brand name. Second, I was surprised that there was such a big difference between organic conversions and paid conversions. I would assume that that paid clicks would be taken to a webpage that is more conversion oriented than the natural search page – but a 50% increase is quite impressive.

Anyway, if you’d like to see more from the SEL post, and see some stats on blended search results (Universal search) head on over. If you want to see the full press release with other interesting auto insurance facts from comScore, click here.