According to a study sponsored by Google and run by Keller Fay, Google is directly involved as an informational resource in 15.4% of all conversations about a brand. That equates to 146 million brand conversations daily.
The Study’s Details
The Keller Fay study, titled the “Word of Mouth and the Internet” study, surveyed a group of 3,000 participants from 12 different demographics. While the study surveyed users in December of 2010, the details were only released this month. The study went off past information that has concluded 2.4 billion conversations happen each day discussing a brand. For the participants of the study, the internet was the top way to become more informed about a brand during, and after the brand conversations.
The “word of mouth conversations” themselves typically happen face to face, but as people turn to the internet – and specifically search – they gain more confidence in a product. Search information is also more likely to result in a product purchase than social media feedback, such as opinions found on Facebook and Twitter. The study found that 45% of participants found search results to be credible, compared to 36% for social media site, while 54% were more likely to act on a brand based on search data, while 46% were likely to act based on social media input.
The other ways to get informed online included looking for the brand website (which 3.2% of surveyed participants did), going to social media outlets (which 3.2% of participants did), and looking at e-commerce sites (which 7% of participants did). Search’s 15.4% makes it more common than all other internet-based modes combined. With Google serving as the most common way to search data, an estimated 146 million brand conversations are directly informed by Google each day. Additionally, Google’s other resources – such as local business searches – often come into play.
[Sources include: The Keller Fay Word of Mouth and the Internet study & the Google AdWords Blog]
