• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, June 7, 2006

It's no secret that search activity influences purchases in ways that extend far beyond direct click-throughs to e-commerce sites. Many consumers make purchases offline, in brick-and-mortar stores--or even if they buy online, they go to the e-commerce site days after conducting the original search.

But while many search engine specialists say they know intuitively, or through anecdotes, that search plays an important role in retail purchases, coming up with hard numbers hasn't been easy.

Research company comScore announced Tuesday it will attempt to quantify the role search plays in the larger retail landscape. comScore intends to roll out studies examining the issue--using a research panel of 200 to 300 consumers per category, according to James Lamberti, comScore senior vice president for marketing solutions.

comScore studies in the last two years have found that direct online conversions usually account for between 5 and 20 percent of search-related purchases; between 60 and 90 percent of conversions occur at brick-and-mortar stores, and between 10 and 35 percent occur in online transactions--but not the same session as the original search. That research was based on combing the search history of volunteer panel members after they reported a purchase, trolling data accumulated through passive monitoring to understand the relationship between online search and purchases.

"E-commerce is a tiny percentage of all the sales that actually occur," Lamberti asserted. "It's obvious when you think how much more search activity there is than final purchasing online."

Research to quantify this type of information is "vital," according to Gord Hotchkiss, president and CEO of Enquiro.com: "From what we know of how search is used so far, that online purchase at the end of the trail of clicks is only a small fraction of the interactions with search that actually happen." Hotchkiss went on: "We know there's a lot of value to those interactions, above and beyond the direct click-through route that search marketing has mostly been operating in."