Google unloaded a goody bag full of new search features at today's Inside Search conference, including Voice Search for Desktop, Search by Image, and Instant Pages. They led off the talk with a fascinating look into how people are searching today, both on computers, and on mobile devices.
Search traffic fluctuates depending on the time of the day, week, and the year, though patterns of use differ between mobile and desktop searches. Google found that desktop search throughout the week stays relatively stable before dipping on the weekends. On the other hand, mobile search actually rises on Friday and Saturday.
Over the day itself, search traffic for the desktop rises towards lunchtime at noon, at which point it takes a little dip, before continuing to drop the rest of the day. However, mobile search rises steadily throughout the day (including a spike at noon), and peaks around nine or ten PM.
Across the year, a similar trend prevails, namely that times dedicated to leisure see drops in desktop search traffic, and rises in mobile search traffic. Here, summer and Christmas show drops in desktop traffic, but growth in mobile traffic.
Google also broke down the time it takes for a user to make a single search, and how much time each part of that search takes to complete. While on average, entering a query takes 9 seconds, and selecting a result takes 15 seconds, actually delivering the results themselves takes 900 milliseconds, with only 100 of those milliseconds making up the time Google takes to serve the result.
Loading a page takes an average of five seconds--though Google's new Instant Pages feature promises to deliver the page in far less.
Check out some of the charts and graphs below:
