• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, August 10, 2011

Mobile and video media might take market share from more traditional advertising, but U.S. adults looking for board shorts, cross-body purses, or smartphones and tablets still launch a browser and type a few keywords into a search engine to find what they need.

In fact, 92% of online adults use search engines to find information on the Web, including 59% who do so on any given day, according to a Pew Internet Project report. The survey, conducted in June, also reveals that 92% of adults who go online use email, with 61% using it on an average day.

These numbers that put search and email at the top online activities by U.S. adults make search engine marketing increasingly important.

Search remains most popular among young adult Internet users ages 18 to 29. Ninety-six percent of them use search engines to find information online. Of Internet users age 65 and older, 87% use search.

Adults who attended college and those bringing home the highest incomes make slightly greater use of search engines to gather information online when compared with other adults.

No surprise that these same groups -- young adults, the college-educated, and higher-income adults -- are also the most likely to use search engines daily, according to Kristen Purcell, associate director for research at Pew Internet Project.

In the report, Purcell points to similar demographic patterns in 2002, when Pew Internet first measured online search. The percentage of U.S. adults who use the Internet on any particular day varies. Pew found that while college graduates top the list at 75%; those with some college follow at 66%; high school, 21%; and some high school, 29%.

"At that time, the college-educated and the highest-income adults were most likely to use search on an average day, though the overall percentage of online adults who used a search engine on an average day was much lower at just 29%," Purcell wrote in the report.

Two other online patterns from 2002 have since vanished. Men were more likely than women to admit they had used an online search "yesterday," at 33% vs. 25%, and white adults were more likely than both African-American and Hispanic adults, at 31% vs. 23% vs. 19%, respectively, to report using a search engine the previous day.

Experts believe the proliferation of smartphones continues to keep this medium at the top of the list. Companies such as Buckaroo continue to build new features into email platforms that pull in other media, such as search and social.

For example, aiming to do what SalesForce did for the CRM, a Web-based tool from Buckaroo allows small businesses to run a social media promotion from the same email campaign. Twitter, which has a limited character count for posts, would identify the title of the promotion that appeared in the email subject line and link to a landing page.

When it comes to email use, the Pew study reveals that 64% of females said they send and receive email on a typical day compared with 59% of males. Caucasians use email most, 63%; followed by Hispanic, 53%; and African-Americans, 48%. Age only makes a difference for the older generation. Only 46% of those 65 years and older use email on a typical day compared with 64% of those ages 18 to 29; 63% of those ages 30 to 49; and 61% of those ages 50 to 64.

Marketers targeting email campaigns to consumers might want to consider household incomes. U.S. adults with household incomes of $75,000 or more are more likely to use email on any given day, at 78%, followed by those with household incomes of $50,000 to $74,999 at 67%; $30,000 to $49,999 at 59%; and less than $30,000 at 47%.

The most recent search figures come from a survey conducted from April 26-May 22 among 2,277 adults ages 18 and older.